The story of our time in the US is going to be a short one, as it was mostly about a family visit with Sarah's dad and step-family and there's only a few things that will be of interest to general readers.
The primary reason we were in Utah in particular was for the skiing. Sarah only skied a couple of days, and I only went for one. But it was a good one. Bright blue skies, not too cold and enough terrain that you could ski all day and not cover the same bit of ground twice. It always takes a little while for me to get my feet under me, but once I do I usually manage pretty well (as I'm fond of saying, I'm brave and I have a low centre of gravity). I even managed my first time skiing in powder okay (though I did fall down in the easy bit right at the end of a run as several familiar faces passed overhead on a lift).
In addition to the skiing there were a few other fun activities we got into:
The Sundance Film Festival was on, so one afternoon we drove the 90 minutes to Park City to check it out and see if we could catch a movie. It proved to be no problem. Mid-week there were still tickets available for a variety of shows up to a couple of hours before they started. We ended up watching the world premiere of a documentary about Steve Bannon, which was good and the Q&A with the director and producer after, which actually really added to it.
I wasn't a huge fan of Park City itself. It's jam packed full of overpriced stores selling pointless goods, and there were truly ridiculous numbers of temporary no parking signs and barriers and people directing traffic and telling you when you could cross the street. And the city owned garages had tripled (or was it quadrupled?) the price of parking during the festival. But the festival itself was awesome. Still mostly volunteer run with a very real sense of community spirit behind it, and screenings taking place all over town (the one we went to was in a very nicely retrofitted room in the library!) We also had some of the best Gin! I've ever enjoyed at the Alpine distillery.
Speaking of drinks, we had a fair bit of Utah beer as well. It's worth mentioning this so I can comment on Utah's unusual alcohol laws. There are two types of license to sell alcohol from a shop: a beer license (usually at supermarkets, corner stores, etc.) and a full license (for full on liquor stores). If you have a beer license you can only sell beer of 4.0%abv or under (same goes for all draft beer). Which many breweries have responded to by taking (for example) their 6% IPA and brewing a version of it with 50% water added at the end, leading to a lot of thin and unsatisfying beers. Why not just focus on styles that taste good at 4%? Or at least brew low alcohol versions of other styles from scratch with recipes designed for the strength? That said, once we realized this and went to a liquor store to buy beer we had some great full strength beers, including a 10% Imperial stout and a cracking 9.6% double IPA.
I guess none of this should have been terribly surprising in the state that's the centre of the Mormon church. Speaking of which, we did have a decent look around central Salt Lake City. It's an incredibly clean and nice looking city. The volunteers at the LDS (Latter Day Saints, what the members of the church call it themselves) holy sites were incredibly friendly and happily took “I'm not religious and not really interested in being proselytised to,” for an answer. But it also felt rather soulless and boring. Downtown was practically empty (on a Thursday afternoon) with ridiculously wide and pedestrian unfriendly streets.
I've saved what was perhaps my favourite activity for last: a visit to the Hill Air Force Base museum. It featured USAF (and a few other) aircraft from the second world war on, including some really cool stuff like a B-17 and B-29, P-38 and all seven of the Century Series (a series of supersonic USAF fighter planes from the '60s and '70s) all parked in the same room. But the clear star of the show for me was the SR-71C Blackbird. Like many tech-nerds and engineers roughly my age, I'd jbeen fascinated by this plane (still the fastest ever built) since I was a kid, and so the chance to walk around and get right up close to one made me feel giddy and childlike again. I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, due also in part to how excited Chris was too, and how enthusiastic the museum volunteer, a USAF veteran who'd worked on bases that the Blackbird flew out of, was about sharing his knowledge and excitement.
Other than all this, of course, there was lots of time spent at home with the family. Everyone took turns preparing dinners and cocktails for the whole lot (we made a Tex-Mex feast with creamy-rum-infused-Peruvian 100% cacao flavoured hot chocolate). People did burpees whenever they said the word “delicious”. And everyone spent a good lot of time out in the lovely warm spa pool.
Huge thanks are, of course, due to Chris and Julie for arranging this whole trip and getting everyone together. After six months on our own it was just wonderful to have seen my family, Raj and all the Sparkses and Clarkses in quick succession!
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