Every journey begins with the first step they say, tonight the first steps were along a windswept River Ness in driving cold sleety rain to catch the late ScotRail train through to Aberdeen.

River Ness on a wild wet night

At a wholly unholy hour on Thursday morning the next hop of the Journey from Aberdeen to London Heathrow will take me South (providing snow doesn’t close Aberdeen Airport…) to join a Virgin Atlantic flight to San Francisco. An hour or so into the Transatlantic flight one can expect to hear the captain say ‘if you look out the left windows you’ll see Loch Ness, the right windows the Cairngorms…..’ Ever get the feeling your going round in circles!

Trains waiting to depart a wet Inverness Station

It’s just gone half eleven at night, we’re chugging through the Northfield area of Aberdeen. Time to log off, but hopefully lots of posts over the next two weeks. Big storms forecast for Tahoe, perhaps I need wider skis, but for now Goodnight.

Well OK not much of a Road Trip yet, more of a frustrating crawl along the A96 towards Aberdeen. However it does mark the first stage of the journey…

This time tomorrow (Friday 27th) it should be fasten seat belts time for the final approach to San Francisco International Airport. The observant amongst you will have spotted the return of the  ‘Return to Kirkwood’ Graphic on the General Situation. It’s just minutes away from hitting 0 days to go…

During the 2005 and 2006 Seasons much of Winterhighland was run from 8 time zones away from a base 7800ft up in the Serria Nevada mountains at Kirkwood Mountain, with some assistance from closer to home with the reports and pix.

Armed with camera and shinny new netbook, I’ll try and post regular blogs and a few pics from the trip. The base will be South Lake Tahoe CA, taking in Kirkwood, Heavenly, Squaw Valley, Homewood and perhaps somewhere else, of course it’s weather dependent. Another 15inches of snow is due to hit Kirkwood Saturday.

Oh and yea, it just had to be done, a Big Mac in Mcdonalds at Elgin to get in the mood !!

Location: Under a railway bridge in Aberdeen freeloading on some wifi.

Mood: Excited!