Pictures from Ohio!

Awesome Ohio Skiing (to be fair, it was the last day of the season and a freak 70 degree day in the middle of a cold spell...but that doesn't excuse the lack of vert)

That is the top of the ski area as seen from the base.

The cheese on most burgers isn't this melty.

Good snowboarders kind of make passable skiers. Kind of.

The reverse is not true. Damn it's hard to stay up on near-flat ground!

Did I mention it was melty?

Air Force Museum AKA Hordes of Sexy, Sexy Planes

A10 Thunderbolt II. I want it so bad.

F22, baby!

You can blame NASA for this thing. It's actually called a "snoopy nose". It's got a 7' radar dish in the nose that they used for tracking Gemini and Apollo missions when the spacecraft didn't have a clear radio path to the U.S..

I do not fit in the F16 cockpit. At all.

Whiskey needs one of these.

It's so big!

FYI

I'm still a really bad snowboarder.  Ohio ski areas are, from my experience, very melty.  I'll post more when I get time and a decent internet connection.

Skiing in Ohio?

It's true, there is skiing in Ohio. One of the areas (there are more than one?!?) is only an hour's drive from Dayton, where I will be for the next two weeks. Here are some of the "features" of Mad River Mountain Ski Area, taken verbatim from it's website:

• 144 Ski-able/Ride-able acres
• 1,460-foot mountain elevation
• 300-foot vertical drop (this is a feature?!?)
  
• 2 Lodges, The Mad River Lodge and The Timberline Lodge, with kitchens and restrooms
• Indoor/outdoor picnic areas
• Learning Center
• National Ski Patrol
• NEW Beginner Terrain Park
• 7,000 gallons of water is pumped up the hill per minute, bringing you the best quality snow available

First off, I'm pretty sure most every standard definition of a "mountain" puts the lower limit at 2,000ft. Second, they only managed to harness 300ft of that, yet they have an express quad and even claim to have advanced runs:

Ok, the double blacks are terrain parks, and it's in Ohio. I'm sure the rating system is no less inflated than here in SoCal where damn near everything at Baldy was rated a double black (for the record, I always that that the second diamond was earned with the presence of couloirs, cliffs, or slopes above 40 degrees, but I guess that's just my opinion).

Also according to the website, this area gets an average annual snowfall of 36". That's thirty six inches. Per year. Total.

My intrepid labmate Dan and I feel that we just have to go to this place. It is a moral imperative.