Wednesday, January 30: It had snowed 30 inches and Chair 6 was set to open for the first time in 2 days, but only if you were riding with pieps and a partner. Despite a 3 pm flight to Vegas it was too good to pass up and I made the solo mission to the promised land for two hours of turns. Finding a riding partner in the lineup wasn't too hard and empty chairs rolled up over the waist deep January snow. And it was deep-real deep. The kind of deep where you spend so much time in the white room it gets hard to breath. But time goes by pretty fast when the snow is that good. All too soon my watch alarm was sounding that it was time to roll to Vegas.

Following a quick transfer from riding gear to party gear I was on an airplane with Frequency's own John Laing and a few friends headed for the SIA trade show in Las Vegas. The desert gave way to the strip in all its seedy glamour-everything larger than life and in your face.

A seafood dinner at the Mandalay Bay got the funny feelings crew together amidst the whirlwind of SIA. Afterwards, Wibby and Maxx led the way to an exhaust filled warehouse off the strip for Tallavegas nights, a Burton organized go-kart tournament. None of us made the finals as a few Burton employees know how to handle a kart pretty damn well (although Maxx landed himself 2nd place in our heat) but racing ten deep led to plenty of bumping and jiving on the track. It was more than enough to carry a buzz out into the desert night.

After a quick awards ceremony a bus took us to the hard rock café where a packed house milled around the circle bar. A thousand miles removed from an unbelievable pow day, partying the night away in the middle of the desert, it was bordering on surreal-was it really just that morning that the snow was waist deep? Mount Baker mornings and Tallavegas nights: not a bad way to spend a day.