St. Thomas for Ryan and Michelle's wedding

Last weekend Julie and I were in St Thomas attending Ryan and Michelle's wedding. We definitely appreciated the brief respite from winter weather but more importantly it was great to see Ryan and Michelle so happy and embarking on a new life together.

This was Julie and my first trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands and we loved it. We stayed at the Marriot on Frenchman's Reef which is also where the wedding took place. Below is a picture of our hotel we took from the scuba boat. The hotel sits on a rocky bluff with a beautiful view and the beach is just to the right out of frame.


The beach was nice and also served as a great launching point for snorkeling expeditions.


Across a Bay from our hotel was where the cruise ships would pull in and I was very fascinated to observe their docking maneuvers as well as how the tug boats threaded them past so many rocky shoals.

Here is a picture that Chris K took using his experimental photographic techniques:

There were huge iguanas cruising all over the resort but they were pretty good about camouflaging themselves when they wanted to. This landing above a waterfall appeared to be one of their most popular hangouts and they weren't shy about investigating the contents of Julie's beach bag...

Here are the bride and groom to be, exploring the island before the big day:


Unfortunatley I don't have any pictures of one of the coolest things we did since I didn't have an underwater camera. Julie and I went scuba diving at the wreck of "Miss Opportunity", a 400 foot hospital ship from World War II that currently rests in about 90 feet of water. The dive master led us through the wreck and you could see things like the big red alarm lights still intact. It was pretty surreal to see the inside of a sunken ship, especially since it is laying almost upside down so things like tables and chairs are bolted to what appears to be the roof.


I also accompanied Ryan and a few other people on a deep sea fishing trip. Below is the boat we took out, a 45 foot Viking:


Here we are cruising out of port and I was busy admiring the wake...

On the way out to where the oceanic shelf drops off we passed by St. Johns and saw some pretty neat houses nestled along the cliffs:

The water was pretty rough and the fish weren't really biting but Ryan did manage to catch this Barracuda:

The teeth on it were pretty impressive

The wedding ceremony took place in a little courtyard with the gazebo below that Alyssa, Julie, and Michelle were scoping out beforehand.

Here is Best Man Chris K walking down the aisle with Ryan right behind him

Here comes the bride with her dad

It must have been hot standing up there in a suit

and here is Michelle listing to Ryan say his vows.

Somebody must have been dinging on a glass...

The day after the ceremony a bunch of the people from the wedding went out on a sailing/snorkeling adventure on a 47 foot sailboat. We sailed from the resort to a deserted island where we moored up in a bay and went snorkeling

Here is the newly married couple, enjoying the sail.

and here is Julie who was engaging in a contest to see who could find and retrieve the most Sand Dollars

One of the highlights of snorkelling was a whole family of Sea turtles who had taken up residence in the bay. I suspect that this might be the birthplace of Testudo, the mascot for University of Maryland.

Finally, here is one last parting shot of the harbor and a few of the smaller islands

Congrats Ryan and Michelle....

Getting Air: A photo journal retrospective

This Thanksgiving, my mom dug up this old picture from when I was younger:

The first thing that would jump out to anyone when they first view this picture is that in my youth I was obviously on the cutting edge of late 80s/early 90s fashion. The combination of my favorite Teal Chuck Taylor All-Stars with red and white striped soccer socks blends perfectly with the Hawaiian shorts and Teal shirt and the entire wardrobe is complemented by my Teal Huffy with white wall tires.

The second thing that occurs to me while looking at this picture is that ever since I was little I have always loved going airborne. The wooden jump in the picture above is one of many that I built in the workshop with my dad and I took my bike off these jumps so many times that eventually the handlebars fell off. (I mean that literally, not figuratively. I still have a nice scar from that incident.)

I loved any activity that resulted in that brief period of weightlessness whether it was jumping my bike, using a trampoline, or joining the diving team. When I first started skiing and then snowboarding jumping was against the rules at many resorts so I was always on the lookout for the ticket-clipping ski patrol as I engaged in my civil disobedience. Fortunately those rules went the way of the dodo and resorts started actively building terrain parks for snowboarding and I was loving every minute of it.

Seeing the photo my mom had given me inspired me to dig through some of my other photos and I've included some of them here.

Below are some frame-by-frame photos that my friend Jake took on one of our previous trips out to Snowbird in years past. We'd built a little kicker in an out of the way spot where the snow was still soft and launched ourselves off it. The landing was so forgiving I decided to go for a a flip and may have had a clean landing except that the sapling in the last frame had other ideas...





This picture is even older and it is from Whistler in British Columbia. It is from one of Julie and my favorite runs called Peak-to-Creek which descends over 5,400 vertical feet from the very top of Whistler into the Creekside village area. A good hint that the picture is from Whistler and not Utah is the fog that Whistler is so famous for. If you could combine the HUGE terrain at Whistler with the blue skies and champagne powder snow that Utah is famous for you would probably have the best ski resort in the world.

Since snowboarding is clearly a cold weather pursuit and migrating to New Zealand every summer was not a viable option, I had to find something similar to do during the summer and wakeboarding was the natural extension:


Once when I was at Brett's ski lake I even tried going off the Ski jump

The landings aren't always pretty but fortunately snow and water are pretty soft (unless you ski on the east coast on the ice rinks they like to masquerade as slopes). Below is a picture of one of my more spectacular crashes, resulting from an ill-conceived attempt to jump off a wake skate, perform half of a raley, and then transition smoothly into a swan dive to enter the water.

Julie loves to snowboard as well and her favorite motto is "Steep and Deep" (As in Steep slopes with plenty of Deep powder). Fortunately those are two things that Utah has in abundance. Below are two pictures of julie carving up the mountain:



And finally, here is a picture of Julie jumping off a cirque and catching some air as she enters the bowl full of powder below: