Road Trippin'



Well it's been a long, long trip, but I've finally reached my new home for the next five months. I pulled into Park City, Utah a little after 7:00pm last night, 10 days after leaving Kirkland. Sure there was an extended break in California, but that's still a lot of driving. Some things I learned on this trip:

• I hate Oregon. It's basically a state that no one knows or cares about, but it takes forever to drive through. The biggest problem is that Oregon has decided that 55mph is a reasonable speed limit throughout a large part of the state.


• One fun fact from Oregon, though: you're not allowed to pump your own gas. In a throw back to the 50's, Oregon has some strange law that requires gas attendants to do all that dirty work work you. Fortunately, they don't tip them (or if they did I missed my queue), so I can't really complain too much.


• Nevada, on the other hand, is great. Yes, it's a beast of state to drive across, but the speed limit is a dreamy 75mph and the roads are straight. There's something to be said for setting cruise control at 90, kicking back and cruising.


• Driving from Seattle to San Francisco is too much for one day. As I found out, it's 13.5 hours of in car driving time (not including the rest stops), and you end up sore in all sorts of weird places for days afterwards. So on the drive from SF to Park City I opted for the two day route, which was much, much better. But since it was a two day trip, I needed some place to stay, which leads me too...


• Casino's are a great place to stay for a night. I stopped in Reno to grab dinner and watch some Monday Night Football and decided to eat at the El Dorado Casino. The bartender mentioned that rooms were going for $38 a night! That was way, way better than crashing in some motel in Elko, Nevada.

So that pretty much sums up the last two weeks of my life. I've been in Park City for about 24 hours now and Utah is definitely a little different (who knew you'd get carded for buying a lighter?!). That's good, though, I like different. Tomorrow will be my first day on the mountain and I start teaching on Monday. Between getting acclimated with Utah and struggling not to ruin my students' first day on the snow, I should have some fun times coming up soon.

Until then.