The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I've taken and places I've seen.
December 31, 2019: the last day of the decade, and an opportunity for me to conquer a fear: skiing. Elizabeth had elaborately planned a route down the slopes of Vail that covered my minor skiing flaws: namely, that I had never been on a chairlift and that I had no fricking clue what I was …
Continue reading “New Year 2020: The Trip Where I (Kinda) Learned to Ski (Days Three and Four)”
May 17 dawned hazy and humid, the way all great storm days should. I woke up in the Colby, Kansas Holiday Inn feeling absolutely stoked. The SPC had outlined a large enhanced risk area across much of Nebraska, including a 10% tornado probability near the warm front. After all the waiting, it was go time. …
Continue reading “TORUS: An Eventful Beginning (May 17, 2019: McCook, NE)”
As an undergraduate member of TORUS, I was only around for the duration of May. In some respects, that meant I felt the clock ticking from the moment our deployment window opened. Given that, May 15 and 16 could have come across as real bummers. Packed firmly under a 500 mb ridge, there was clearly …
I’ll never forget the moment that I learned that I had been selected to be part of a dang tornado research campaign. Elizabeth and I were on vacation, in a cab in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We hadn’t had any contact with the outside world for a couple of days, and so when she turned her …
On July 14, 2018, Elizabeth and I tried one of our most challenging hikes – Guadalupe Peak in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
When I think about snow days in my childhood, I think about sitting in front of the TV, waiting for my school district to show up on the crawl at the bottom with the word “CLOSED”. I think of staying hunkered down all day against blowing and drifting snow, and bitter sub-zero wind chills, and …
Have you ever dreaded something so much that you contemplate pretending to sprain your ankle to get out of it? I won’t say that’s how scared I was of learning how to ski, but I wasn’t far off on the morning of December 30, 2019. Elizabeth and Pam did a great job of trying to …
Continue reading “New Year 2020: The Trip Where I (Kinda) Learned to Ski (Day Two)”
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I may not qualify as an old dog, but I wasn’t convinced that I could ever learn to ski. Despite growing up in West Michigan, less than half an hour from a ski area, I had only attempted it once in my life – a …
Continue reading “New Year 2020: The Trip Where I (Kinda) Learned to Ski (Day One)”
For some people, exam week means endless cramming and all-night study sessions. May of 2019 featured an active weather pattern, so for me it included a jaunt to the Caprock region to chase a Panhandle moderate risk. On Tuesday, May 7, the SPC outlined an area with a 15% tornado risk. I had met with …
One of Elizabeth’s goals in life is to visit every national park. It’s funny to think about it, but in the summer of 2018, she still had yet to visit any. Thus, we made plans to visit two parks once her differential equations class was over. On the recommendation of my coworker, Ethan, we planned …
Continue reading “Adventure Summer Part 2: National Parks Trip, Day 1”
