Raymond Johnson @ downclimb.com

I have made a habit of posting on December 31, if for no other reason to ensure that I've posted at least yearly on this blog since 2001. I found an old post titled " Y2K + 10 " that I wrote 10 years ago, so the logical title for this post must be "Y2K + 20." I only have a few hours before the year, and the decade, comes to a close, so I'll try to pick a highlight from each month to show what I'll remember most from 2019. January Midwinter skies from the new apartment A year ago I was closing the door on my old apartment at CU Boulder, bringing to a final close my long tenure there as a graduate student. And what a wonderful tenure it was! That meant I spent a lot of January trying to get settled into a new apartment. In hindsight, it's been a really good move for me. I do miss aspects of Boulder, but I have a more comfortable living space here and it's cut my commute by about 15 minutes. February I was on the road quite a bit for w...

Today is my last day of a much-appreciated spring break, one that I spent working on some school work and hanging out with my nephew. I picked Huston up Wednesday night and we went skiing on Thursday at Breckenridge. Huston had never skied before, but, being a hockey player and ice skater, he picked it up quickly, making is 3rd and 4th runs without falling. (We were on Peak 7, easy intermediate terrain.) We skied a ton - everything on Peak 7, including Pioneer twice and Lincoln Meadows four times, Northstar (the toughest for Huston), Springmeier and 4 O'Clock on Peak 8, and Briar Rose on Peak 9. I think that might have been a total of 14 runs. We've spent most of the rest of our time relaxing and watching movies. The list of movies watched in total has grown almost as fast as the list of ski runs on Thursday. We started with "Anchorman" (Dorothy Mantooth is a saint!), "Warren Miller's Fifty" (in preparation for skiing), then moved on to all four R...