Indoor Skiing/Snowboarding
Wow. There simply is no limit to human ingenuity. From the second indoor pool ever built in America, which so happens to be at Gallaudet University, humans have been bringing increasingly larger outdoor activities into the confines of the Small Indoors. Ah, the good 'ol Great Outdoors: skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, offroading, surfing, kiteboarding, water skiing, skydiving(!), all adrenaline-filled.
We have seen surfing, water slides, bungee jumping, Formula One go-karting, golf driving ranges, football and baseball, and other activities move indoors. My first shocking exposure to that cold, hard reality of mass modernization was in Minnesota, where I saw several HUGE, hangar-sized superstructures with weird tubes looping outside the exterior. No, it was not some exotic particle accelerator, what I was seeing was indoor water parks. Ah, it made sense, Minnesota gets bitteringly cold all the time, and of course people there want to escape. Thanks to modern technology, they got options.
It was inevitable that someone would try to bring the snow slopes indoors. But, it totally blew me away when I found out that there is more than 300 indoor snow domes, according to snow365.com, scattered all over the globe except for North America! Yes, you read me right, in good 'ol materialistic America, there is nowhere where you can go indoor skiing. If you were from the Netherlands, you would have several locations (I think seven) to pick from! Even in South Africa and Dubai! I was almost ashamed till I learned that there are plans to build indoor snowparks in New Jersey, Texas, Atlanta, and Mexico City. The one in New Jersey, Xanadu, wil open in Sping 2007 , cost $1.3 billion and feature a 140-foot high snow dome covering 250,000 square foot. (source: CNN.com)
Welcome to the future, my friend. Starting to look like The Matrix, with its huge domed city-pods, eh?
We have seen surfing, water slides, bungee jumping, Formula One go-karting, golf driving ranges, football and baseball, and other activities move indoors. My first shocking exposure to that cold, hard reality of mass modernization was in Minnesota, where I saw several HUGE, hangar-sized superstructures with weird tubes looping outside the exterior. No, it was not some exotic particle accelerator, what I was seeing was indoor water parks. Ah, it made sense, Minnesota gets bitteringly cold all the time, and of course people there want to escape. Thanks to modern technology, they got options.
It was inevitable that someone would try to bring the snow slopes indoors. But, it totally blew me away when I found out that there is more than 300 indoor snow domes, according to snow365.com, scattered all over the globe except for North America! Yes, you read me right, in good 'ol materialistic America, there is nowhere where you can go indoor skiing. If you were from the Netherlands, you would have several locations (I think seven) to pick from! Even in South Africa and Dubai! I was almost ashamed till I learned that there are plans to build indoor snowparks in New Jersey, Texas, Atlanta, and Mexico City. The one in New Jersey, Xanadu, wil open in Sping 2007 , cost $1.3 billion and feature a 140-foot high snow dome covering 250,000 square foot. (source: CNN.com)
Welcome to the future, my friend. Starting to look like The Matrix, with its huge domed city-pods, eh?
1 Comments:
dude, there's only about 30 snowdomes in the world. About 2 or 3 are being built every year, but not close to 300.
kari
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