Ski Resorts and Vanishing Snow!

As I've blogged before... climate change is real. It's happening. We won't get into the causes, solutions, marketing opportunities, etc. One huge industry that's attempting to battle the brown bandit of climate change are Ski Resorts. What are they going to do if there isn't snow in 50 or 100 years?!

Well, many of them are working hard now to combat that potential likelihood and feverishly putting in extras and non-snow-sports options to not only entice the more sedentary among us and to increase their year-round popularity, but to also improve their no-snow survivability. Many resorts in the Swiss Alps that used to be mobbed for their winter revelry are now attempting to compete in the areas of pop culture, shopping, and spa'ing in addition to their lessening on-hill attractions.

In the meantime, get your snow-on and head up to the Whistler SlopeSide Retreat. They still have great snow in the winter and even more to do in the summer with several world-class golf courses, mountain biking tracks, hiking trails, and more!!!

Green Travel Going Virtual...

Forecasters are starting to predict that in about 10 years time real travel will be largely replaced by virtual travel as the desire and need to be eco conscious alters travel as we know it. But how is this affecting travel today?

Two interesting developments come from a couple of notable airlines: Air Canada and Virgin. Air Canada who has been voted the best airline in North America, to the confusion of many of its' customers, has recently introduced a voluntary carbon offsetting program. This revolutionary program allows fliers to purchase a carbon credit add-on if their conscience leads them to do so. This additional fee is handled by ZeroFootprint a non-profit environmental organization that will take your 'donation' and use it to plant trees within British Columbia.

Another interesting development is that Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson has started a new venture, Virgin Green Fund, in an effort to seek to find and use renewable fuels that are economically feasible and environmentally friendly. The Virgin Green Fund was started with $400M in seed money and will continue to receive profits from both the Virgin Airline and train businesses over the next 10 years. I've read that the anticipated figure is an additional $3B of investment but heard Branson quote a figure of $10B while on Martha Stewart's show.

Maybe we'll still be able to fly in 10 years. Let's hope so, it's a big world out there.

Some carbon offset examples:
Vancouver, BC to London, UK - 1.6T of CO2 per flight - $25.60CDN
Vancouver, BC to Maui, HI - .9T of CO2 per flight - $14.40CDN
Vancouver, BC to Calgary, AB - .2T of CO2 per flight - $3.20CDN

Mosquitoes... narrowly avoided.

So Trish & I decided to get away for a night this weekend and decided that would be by camping in Whistler for Saturday night. We booked a tenting site at the Riverside RV Campground & Resort.

We checked in around 1:30pm and decided to set up our tent before hitting the town. Now at this point in the story you may be wondering why we were setting up a tent since we have the Disco Camper v. 1.5 at our disposal. Well, it turns out that the sites in question are not drive-in and are in fact walk-in and thus the Disco Camper would not suffice. So, we set up our tent at the spot they designated for us and due to the extreme amount of mosquitoes and a campfire ban in effect we decided to enjoy the rest of Whistler until bedtime.

Later that evening as we drove back towards the parking lot near our campsite Trish noticed some people 'in our site', or so she thought. We parked, put some pants on, and then strolled toward our site where sure enough there WERE people in our site and they had already set up their tent and staff from the campground had taken down our tent and removed all of our stuff from the site. We were a little shocked, but tried to find out what was going on. Apparently we had set up in the 'wrong' site, according to the managements quick research. We reviewed our info and had actually set up in the spot we were told to, however, in the computer we were supposed to be 5 sites down. In the hurried take down of our tent by the campground staff they also inadvertently broke one of our tent poles rendering our tent somewhat useless.

The campground has some log cabins in addition to their tent and RV sites, and fortunately there was ONE log cabin remaining which they decided to put us into.

All and all it worked out pretty well and they handled things fairly well, other than the broken tent pole, which they will be replacing. But the cabins were clean, dry, mosquito free, and had showers, etc. so it was somewhat of a nice surprise.

Maui Uber Post

No educated editorial banter here, just a journal-style rambling of our activities of the last week.
We've taken it pretty easy but done a few specific things, I guess. Tuesday evening we went into the 'big' city of Kahului and did some shopping, picking up a few items needed for the condo and we got ourselves some inexpensive tennis rackets. Wednesday was pretty relaxed, don't think we really did anything specific other than our first tennis match.

Thursday was our first day sans-friends and we went out to the area I really like snorkeling at, Ahihi Bay, but this time we went past it into the Laparouse Bay lava fields that are now a nature reserve. We parked and then hiked about a half-mile down the road and then at 45 feet before the second to last telephone pole before the poles switch to the other side of the road we took a trail about a mile across the lava fields to a great little spot called 'fish bowl'. The 'fish bowl' was almost entirely protected from the ocean and had very little waves which made it great for Tricia especially. We saw a couple things we hadn't yet seen, like some pencil (sea) urchins, and a few crazy fish, names TBD.

Friday was our big surfing day. There was a $10 savings per person if we took the lesson 30 minutes away in Lahaina. Since Lahaina happens to be quite close to Ka'anapali, another nice resort area where we had spent our last night on our previous trip, we thought we'd take it there and make a day-trip out of it. We packed out lunches and drove up there right after the market close. We started with some souvenir shopping at the Whaler's Village for gifts and such, and then we walked along the beach for a little snorkel at Black Rock, sans flippers which makes it quite challenging. After our snorkel we sat on the beach for a bit, at our sandwiches, and enjoyed the view with our toes in the sand. Before we knew it it was time to motor on over to our Surfing lesson.

The surfing lesson was fun, our instructor Lucas was from Brazil and a real riot. Knowing that I had surfed a bit before he decided to make me go on the big waves, but his instruction helped a lot and he was able to point out what I was doing wrong, etc. Trish also did really well and it was a good intro to surfing. Our lesson seemed to start a bit late, maybe it was on island time, and potentially went a bit long as well. In light of that we didn't get back to our car until about 5:23pm and we had a reservation for dinner at 6:30pm.

Normally this wouldn't sound like a challenge, however we were approx. 45 minutes away from the condo, quite salty and sandy, and then another 10-15 minutes from our dinner reservation. Trish decided we could rise to the challenge and after 3 minute showers and lightning-quick ready-getting we made it to our reservation only a few minutes late. The mai-tai for two that the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a served seemed to do a great deal of calming. The lovely sunset, rushing waterfall in the background, and 40,000 gallon fish filled salt water lagoon probably also influence our calmness.

Saturday was another pretty relaxed day for us. We spent some time by the pool, some time in our place, and sometime at the beach. We BBQ'd some Ono (a white fish) for dinner and had a fairly chill evening.

On Sunday we again went back to Hope Chapel, our friend's church. We really enjoy the worship and the pastor's quite funny. If we were ever to be in Kihei on a more extended time frame we could certainly make that our home. After that we grabbed our day stuff and headed up to Pia'a on Maui's North Shore. We decided to have breakfast at Charley's a famous eatery that serves one of the most massive buttermilk pancakes I've ever seen. Once we were thoroughly stuffed we went over to Hokipa Beach to watch the windsurfers for a little while. Their speed and skill is quite amazing. We didn't see any kite-boarders this time, which is good, since there wouldn't be any thing visual to tempt us into it. It'll have to wait until SouthEast Asia. Since the North Shore is so windy we decided to just head back over to Kihei to hit the beach, especially since it was about 1pm and we like to try to stay out of the sun during the sun's hottest rays. After chillin' for a bit we grabbed some beach chairs and hit the beach to partake in the locals regular weekend activity... sitting on the beach. For dinner we BBQ'd a couple teriyaki chicken breasts and enjoyed some beverages but then I ate too much and felt sick. Boo.

As for what's on store this week... who knows? But the weather forecast has been getting better each day, so far so good. We'll have to see if our last couple of days turn out nice or not.