Jay Peak Tease

Carried the new camera around all day, and got a bunch of great pictures.  Here's a couple to tickle your fancy (if that phrase exists anymore) before I go to bed:

Northeast Ski Blogger Summit

In a ridiculous stroke of luck, I somehow stumbled into a "ski blogger summit."  When I woke up this morning, I had no idea what to expect.  It turned out to be one of the best days of the year.  Here's the report:

I woke up earlier than usual.  In fact, the clock in my car hasn't seen this side of 6:00 in a long time:

I drove north.  Way north.

I stopped to take a picture of the Sunrise (!!!) and kept going:

Until I eventually reached this sign:

Hmmm, Hockey and Strippers, or Maple Syrup and Skiing?  Tough choice.  Eventually, I found myself here:

And despite the large number of French speaking Quebecois, I was actually still in Vermont.  Jay Peak, to be exact.

Perhaps I should stop and give some background.  I got an email from "Harvey" at Harvey Road asking if I'd be interested in a blogger's summit in Jay Peak.  To which I responded "Hell Yeah." After a few months and a few emails back and forth, Harvey, Steve (thesnowway.com), Gord (The Real Jay Peak Snow Report), James (Harvey Road and firsttracksonline), and I were headed up to Jay.

Like I said, I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out fantastic: 6-8 inches of fresh snow, solid skiers, and very little stopping (surprisingly little for a bunch of ski bloggers).  We were all over the mountain, ripping trees, blasting through pow, and whooping it up all the way down.  I realize that Jay Peak isn't always like this (I hear it gets a tad cold and windy sometimes), but today, it skied pretty damn well.  And I was so pumped to at a new (to me) mountain, skiing with new (to me) people, and having a new (to me) experience.  I'll let the other guys post their superior pics and video, I just have a couple of pics I thought were cool/instructive.

Jay's trees are a lot more open than the trees I'm used to:

Also, 6-8 inches is enough to get face shots:

And mountain photographs on overcast afternoons look more moody and introspective in black and white:

After the day was over, and we sat around the dinner table, Gord introduced a new (to me) discussion: Everyone at the table would go around and recount their favorite run of the day.  My choice was easy:  We took a trail called River Quai (a steep, rocky shot underneath the tram with a wide open powder field at the bottom), followed by Buckaroo Banzai (an open glade with dips, drops, and fresh pow shots in the second half).  The run was pretty much everything I wanted (and expected) of Jay: Challenge, Trees, and Pow.  It was the perfect run.

To me.

Burnout?

Around this time of year, every year, people stop thinking about skiing. I’m not talking about myself, of course, but the thousands of that people get done with Presidents’ Week and put the ski gear away. I want to say one thing to these people: Keep on doing what you’re doing.

I mean, selfishly, I love the fact that March is a month of warm temperatures, long days, and uncrowded slopes, but you might feel differently. As the red part of thermometer starts rising, it is completely natural to think of mountain biking, golf and baseball. Pursue these activities with the same vigor that you had when you started skiing this year (sometime around Christmas). Even Warren Miller says that around this time of year, he yearns for the warmth of spring and summer:

I have to admit, that about the middle of February, I would like to be able to get my golf score under 137 for 18 holes during four or five days at some Arizona course.

And if Warren Miller is doing it, it can’t be bad! You saw “his” ski movie this past fall with all those other people in that theater downtown. Those guys were obviously a bunch of core skiers. I bet they didn’t let that free weekday lift ticket to Windham go to waste!!

Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh. After all, my new, enlightened theory of skiing is about letting people enjoy the mountain in any way they want; whether that means epic pow in tree stashes (which I will enjoy this weekend), or ski boots in the bar (which I will enjoy making fun of this weekend). It’s not like I’m the final arbiter of what’s cool on the slopes (the skiing version of this guy). I should really try to relax and just accept everyone for who they are. Maybe my jobs (skiing jobs, not real job) are stressing me out. I’ve been teaching skiing every Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday for 5 weeks straight now. It’s definitely time for a break. I really enjoyed reading this article, about a guy who thought he landed his dream job when he got a position with a guiding company that took clients climbing up Mount Rainier:

Really, I got paid to carry a big pack and walk slowly in dangerous places while tied to clients who were seemingly trying to kill themselves (and, by extension, me). When I did finally have a day off, climbing was the last thing I wanted to do. Eventually, and entirely by accident, I landed a “real” job. I hear a lot of people blaming their office jobs for their failure to get out and get after it. However, I find that my desk job hasn’t killed my climbing; it’s actually given me the freedom (and rest) to do more.

I get more climbing, biking, and skiing done now than I ever used to. The reason is simple: I don’t have a job that requires me to carry heavy packs, roll up rafts, or generally stress out about my clients’ safety. So, when I want to get after it on my own terms, I’m actually rested and ready to go.

I’m not at the point where skiing is the last thing I want to do (in fact, I have a couple of really sweet trips coming up), but lately, I’ve definitely been enjoying the time in the office for providing a little bit of a respite.

Ace and I were talking about this kind of thing the other day, actually. Our last summer of mountain biking and road biking was awesome. And what made it even better is that we did it on our own terms. On Saturdays, we’d get up when we wanted, have a relaxing breakfast, meet some friends, ride around for a few hours, and go out for a nice lunch/dinner and a few beers. There was no pressure to be at the mountain at 8:30, no lineups to go to, no having to park in a parking lot 2 miles from the trail, etc. It was just us and some friends riding around and having fun.

I’m hoping to recapture some of that in March. All of the work is (almost) done and now it’s time to play. The only weekend that I’ll be working at the mountain in March is the 12-13 (when I’ll be teaching the “Glades and Glory” 2-day tree skiing camp). The rest of the time, maybe I should start taking Warren Miller’s advice seriously:

One of the weird things I believe in is to enjoy the snow to the fullest because the following week when you are sitting in front of a computer at Old Amalgamated Stock Brokers, you will regret that you slept in and missed that epic day of powder snow.

Remember, the best day of skiing that you have ever had and try and put a price tag on it. Is it worth a million dollars or 10 billion dollars? It is not for sale for any price. The only way that you can own one of these special days is to be the first one in the chair lift line on a powder snow morning after having had a good night's sleep.

Memories are priceless. So keep on doing spectacular things so that you can keep depositing new things in your memory bank every day.

Thanks, Warren. Maybe I’ll see you in the bar someday (I’ll be the one without ski boots on – some things I just can’t accept).

More Photography Stuff

A couple of quick notes:

As I learn more about photography, I'm thinking that's it's not always the camera that makes the shot.  Case in point: I took my camera out last Monday for a walk around the nature preserve by my house (along the old Erie Canal) to work on my photographer's eye and try to get a few good shots.  I ended up deleting most of them.  This was probably my best attempt:

 

Not so good.  It was the middle of the day, so the light wasn't really stellar, and to tell you the truth, the scenery was a little boring (would have been a good place for some xc skiing, though). Contrast that with this picture (another find from my old closet) I took when I was in New Zealand for a semester in college:

That picture was taken with an old, cheap, 35mm camera, developed as a 3x5 and then scanned in to my computer at one of the lowest settings.  And it has a date burned into upper right corner!  And it still looks a million times more artistic, creative, and lively than that drab picture from the Nature Preserve.  I guess there's only one solution: go back to New Zealand.

All hope is not lost, though.  If it takes me a while to get the hang of photography, I can always fall back on video.  I thought the video feature of my new camera was kind of a nice bonus, but not really of much use for serious film.  I was seriously mistaken.  Here's a video shot entirely with my camera (the Pentax k-x):

Scion Snow Tour 2011 Roundtop Rail Jam from Manhouse Media on Vimeo.

Sick.

Weather might be a little sketchy this weekend (thaw/freeze/thaw/freeze/wind), but I'll be skiing both days.  Maybe I'll see you at the mountain.

College

With my parents retiring, selling their house, and moving to North Carolina, it was up to me to clean out my old closet. Between college books, baseball cards, and various useless souvenirs (New York Mets Magazine from that game I went to in 1990 – Howard Johnson on the cover!), I found a cache of photographs from college. There were some pretty sweet shots in there. But first, the background: 

While I loved skiing in high school, 4 years on the ski team, preceded by 5 years in the ski club, had made skiing stale and a little boring. I felt like I had reached the highest levels I could. I had put in over 60 days for each of the previous 5 years, and I spent a lot of time in the freezing cold, shivering in my speed suit, waiting for a race to start. I didn’t want to be on the college ski team, and I didn’t really know how much I wanted to ski at all.

But summer came, and the itch started to develop again. My one request for a college roommate was someone that skied. And that’s how I met Todd (Toddykins, in college).  

 

He was responsible for two things: One, reinvigorating my love for skiing with an unquenchable desire to get out there; and Two, getting me into tele skiing. The first day that Sunday River opened in 1998, we were there. The first day that Sugarloaf opened, we were there. When it snowed 24”, we strapped on our skis and jumped off the cliffs behind the dorms.

When we got bored around campus, we built a semi-successful, but eventually stupid quarterpipe.

For spring break, we didn’t go to Cancun, we went to Fernie, BC.

And we extended the season even further by skiing Tuckerman Ravine in Late April and Early May.

Todd works for a major bank and is now in Singapore (I think), and Andy (the other guy in the photos) is a doctor in Tuscon, AZ. I don’t know if they can’t ski as much as they want or if they just don’t want to ski that much anymore (although, for what it’s worth, Todd says that his 10 days of heli skiing a year are worth an entire season of East Coast skiing). But I do know that for a few years in college, I was more psyched on skiing that I had ever been before.

Sometimes it takes a little push to get you going again. I’m glad that happened in my late teens/early 20’s. I might not have always made the most economically sound decisions in my life (obviously, I’d be in a much better financial place if I were a banker or doctor), but I still get over 60 days on snow per year. And I know that most of those days will be filled with the same smiles that I had when I was at school in front of our hastily made, shoddily constructed quarterpipe.

New Camera

Well, I did it.  I bought a new camera.  Even though my furnace needs fixing and my car has weird warning lights popping up, I felt I needed to plop down a few hundred for a nice DSLR.  I went with the Pentax k-x over the Nikon for two main reasons: Price (about $150 cheaper) and faster continuous shooting capability.  When I go to buy new lenses, this decision might come back to haunt me (quick internet searching reveals that Nikon lenses are more readily available), but right now, I have to say I'm completely stoked on my new purchase.  After a little internet research, I figured out the 3 main points of SLR photography (and photography in general): Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO.  How these three go together separate well exposed pics from poorly exposed pics.

I took the camera to the community college class I teach at West Mountain on Thursday night for some trial and error (mostly error). As The Saratoga Skier and Hiker has found, nighttime skiing photography is a difficult endeavor.  Here was my first attempt:

  

I was trying to capture a decent sunset through my front window as I was driving.  Unfortunately, the auto focus focused on my filthy windshield instead of what was beyond the windshield.  No way to focus while I was driving, so I waited until I got to the mountain to shoot more. I stepped out of the car and shot this:

Better, but a little grainy.  I wanted to open up the aperture to get as much light in as possible, but doing that increased the ISO to a level that I wasn't happy with.  I moved the ISO down to 1600 and took another.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere.  The only problem with this photo is the blur in the center right.  The skiers coming towards me are fine, but the skier moving perpendicular to me is blurry.  Another example:

Clearly I need more shutter speed to capture action.  Or do I?  I've seen some pictures that create a cool effect by panning with the moving object, creating a blurred background, but a focused subject.  I thought I'd give it a try:

Not bad for my first attempt!  I definitely have to remember this technique for mountain biking shots.  I put my camera away for the time being and taught my lesson.  After a warmup break, we came out and took one more run.  I decided to practice some action shots:

 

 
For these shots, I cranked the aperture as wide as possible, jacked up the shutter speed, and kept the ISO at 1600.  I tried to pan with the skiers as they were moving, and I used the burst mode on the camera to shoot at 4.6 frames per second.  I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the results.  If this camera can get this kind of resolution at night, it's going to look pretty freakin' good during the day.  Can't wait to try it out.

I'll be teaching the "Master of the Mountain" 2-day class at Gore this weekend, so if anyone wants to dominate the mountain Matt-style, c'mon up and ski with me.

Brief Update

I've been skiing like a madman lately, 6 times in the last 8 days, including a double dip yesterday of Gore Trees during the day and West Mountain Groomers at night.  So I haven't go the chance to update my blog as much as I'd like.  Rest assured, though, I'm still thinking of my loyal readers.  I've written a couple of posts that are awaiting pictures (just need to find the time to scan them in).  And it looks like I'm getting a pretty decent tax return, so I might have some new blogging toys soon (Mmmmm . . . DSLR . . . .).

Also, I forgot to mention one thing in my last post about things necessary for great blog posts.  In order to have great pictures and video, you need to have some damn good skiers on the other side of the camera.  So all those guys on Famous Internet Skiers, or TGR, or wherever it is on the internet that you see people slaying powder and hucking cliffs, deserve mucho credit for being way above average in the skiing department.

Not as good as me, of course, but everyone needs something to aspire to . . .

:-D

Blogging/Photography

Blogging is hard.  When you’re ripping sweet, sweet pow (especially when it’s freezing cold), the last thing you want to do is take out a camera and start shooting video.  When you’re skiing with other people, I always feel a little dickish when I say: “Hey guys, I’m going to snag first tracks.  Then I’ll post up next to those trees down there, you guys sit here and stare at my tracks until I get my camera all set up and wave you down.” Then, when you get home, instead of reaching for a beer and plopping yourself down on the couch, you have to download the pics to the computer, maybe edit a video, write up the Trip Report, or participate in some good natured internet forum jibber jabber.

Then there’s the financial burden.  You’re paying for gas to get to the mountain, lift tickets for the day, ski school for the kids (if I had kids), lunch, beer, and ski equipment.  On top of that, there’s the cost of the blogging equipment: point and shoot (P&S) camera, flip cam, helmet cam, phone, laptop, internet access, phone service, and most importantly, time.

I was thinking about this stuff when I was tooling around for a new camera.  I love the photos that come out of trip reports that are shot with really nice cameras (skiing or mountain biking).  I was thinking of getting an entry-level DSLR and trying to get into photography a little more (thinking of a Nikon D3100).  

But then I realized the extra costs that would be associated with such a purpose.  First off, I’d need a way to carry the thing.  I can’t just stuff a DSLR in my pocket like I could a P&S.  So I’d need some sort of carrying case thingy.  Then, I’d probably need some extra lenses (I don’t know if this is true or not, I’m still trying to learn about SLR photography).  And, to be perfectly honest, I might need a new computer (mine is 7 years old).  I keep getting the low memory warnings popping up, so I delete an old movie edit, and a few weeks later they pop up again (I might be able to get around this by buying an external hard drive).  I’m still tossing the idea around in my mind, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

What really inspired this new interest (besides cool trip reports), was the recent article on slate.com about Slow Photography.  Like the Slow Food movement, Slow Photography is more about enjoying the present moment, and not just “documentation” (this is where we were, this is what we saw):

That's why, eventually, anyone who considers her- or himself "into" photography becomes interested in beauty (and using a camera to create it). The difference between documentation and the beauty impulse is that the latter has the power to produce not just a memory, but an emotional response in any viewer. That's very different from the impulse to record. For group pictures are never beautiful, nor are photos in front of the Eiffel Tower. (It is big, and the subject is too small.)

You do need to slow down at least a little to create beautiful photos. And yet fast photography is not the enemy of good results, by the logic of volume: If you take a thousand photographs, one or two will turn out great. Professional photographers rely on this logic, and it is also the raging theory on African safaris. At any given moment in the Serengeti, thousands of shutters are clicking, and among the gigabytes of crap are a few photos that will turn out great.

No, the real victim of fast photography is not the quality of the photos themselves. The victim is us. We lose something else: the experiential side, the joy of photography as an activity. And trying to fight this loss, to treat photography as an experience, not a means to an end, is the very definition of slow photography.

And the pictures aren’t bad either.

Of course, it’s not just Photography that is going slow.  Skiing is jumping on the bandwagon as well:

"This is a new approach to skiing in Italy," said Walter Galli, a spokesman for the resort. "It's about getting away from the competitiveness of the main slopes, leaving the stress of the office behind and taking a moment to yourself."

The Breuil-Cervinia resort in the Valle d'Aosta region of northwest Italy has prepared the trail for skiers of all levels, complete with picturesque viewing points and wooden benches for those who want to catch their breath.

Organisers have named it after Italy's slow food movement - a campaign to get people to improve their quality of life and take pleasure in a more relaxed way of living.

You know, especially during this time of year (when the mountain is crowded, I’m working my ass off, freeskiing opportunities are few and far between), I could probably use this type of relaxation.  In my continuing quest to live more in the moment, I could really stand to stop and look around for a while.  What else you got?

At Alta Badia in the Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen, a group of Michelin-starred chefs have organised the "ski with taste" initiative.

"We've created a gastronomic route where hungry skiers can stop and indulge in delicious meals made from local produce," said Arturo Spicocchi, who came up with the idea along with fellow chefs Norbert Niederkofler and Fabio Cucchelli.

"There are 10 mountain huts, each run by a different chef. We create our own signature dishes from local ingredients such as honey, apples and speck (a mountain ham)," he said.

Now THAT sounds like an experience worth blogging about!

Get It.

After two days of staring longingly out the window, I’m finally taking tomorrow off . . . To install a dishwasher.  That’s right, no skiing until this weekend.  I looked at the calendar and, although I am not big on counting days, I already have 22 days on snow (all alpine - ugh - except for that first day @ Whiteface).  That’s not half bad, all things considered.

I guess I’m just biding my time, waiting for opportunity, and getting ready to blast off.  I still feel like the season has barely started.  Despite some epic posts, there are still some reports of low base levels and sketchy conditions (even in the places that got hammered the last few days).  And Meathead films just barely kicked off their filming for this year’s video.

Starting in February, I’ll be skiing 4 to 5 times a week, so I’m not really fretting my lack of ski days right now.  Plus I’ve been busy at work.  I’ve got a big presentation that I’m giving a week from Monday, and finding enough time for everything is getting more difficult.  Maybe I need a lesson on work/life balance.  Here’s a section of an article I read the other day:

While contemplating work issues, Robinson realized that millions of Americans lack basic "life skills," which are quite different from those you employ on the job. They have forgotten how to have fun and enjoy life in their non-work hours. They are beaten down by their jobs and unfulfilled by their lives. Part of the problem lies in a fantastic proliferation in recent years of home-entertainment options and digital devices that keep us at a distance from physical reality. We are ever more immersed in alternative realities that can be enthralling and relaxing after a hard day of work, but keep us from spending our time in recreation, hobbies, or community activities that would actually make us happy. Those pursuits are essential if we want to satisfy our core needs -- autonomy, competence and relatedness -- according to Robinson.

Another obstacle to our happiness is that we often pursue our few leisure activities with a "performance mind." We play tennis to win, yoga only to get fit, or travel to put notches on our "great experiences" belt. It's all about accomplishment and competition, when it should mostly be about the intrinsic value of what we pursue, as Robinson convincingly explains in his book. "Art for art's sake," not "art for ego's sake," will make us deeply happy. Play is the thing, to misquote Shakespeare.

A couple of things about this: First, I am going to use this as further evidence of my glowing boxes hypothesis (more glowing boxes=less happiness).  Second, perhaps my resolutions were a bit skewed. One of my resolutions was to make one post a month that makes people want to be where I am.  But is that goal really about my happiness?  Or is more of an ego boost?  A “look at me”-type boasting?  Come to think of it, maybe all ski blogging is an exercise in masturbatory self-congratulation.  Are we really making ourselves happier, or just trying to make ourselves seem cooler?

I’ve thought about this, and I’m pretty sure I’d be making videos, taking pictures, and writing this blog even if nobody was reading it (and, judging by the traffic statistics, that’s pretty close to the truth).  I write things like this because I’m going to want to look back at this someday to see what I was thinking at this point in my life.  I take pictures because I want to see what it looked like when I was living.  I shoot and edit video because I enjoy it.

So is it bad that I strive to make one blog post a month that makes people say “wow”?  Absolutely Not!  Anything that inspires me to get outside and go skiing, is something that I want to embrace.  And to that end, here’s a recent article on backcountry beacon.com

Fast-forward four years to the ’08-’09 snow season, my last in Utah. In that time I had morphed from a wide-eyed powder neophyte to a bona fide snow snob. I would wake up in the morning and call the Solitude snow report: “We’ve received seven inches overnight and nine inches in a 24 hour period …”

Seven inches? I’ll just go to work.

Seriously? Go to work? What was I thinking?

Let’s stop here for a minute. I have to preface all this. I now live in Vermont, where a seven-inch powder day doesn’t get scoffed at. Last season—which I’m told was meager at best—we got two, maybe three days of only seven inches. No matter. Every time I went out with Vermonters, they were grinning ear-to-ear whether we were slaloming through hardwoods or carving on the groomers.

This winter has started off much more promising. The snow is slowly accumulating and we’re one big dump away from full coverage. (Bring it on Nor-Easter!) If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that skiers and snowboarders in Vermont don’t mess around with numbers: “If it’s good, get it.”

Exactly.  If there’s one code to live by in the east, that’s pretty much spot on.  Maybe that dishwasher installation can wait . . .

2011 Goals

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I’ve been having a rough time.  The holiday period is always super busy for a ski instructor, and I put in a bunch of days at the mountain.  Plus, I never do my Christmas shopping early, so the run up to Christmas is always packed with trips to crowded malls and stress about what to buy.  Then there are the family obligations, the friend obligations, and the work obligations mixed in.

And it’s not just the “to-do” list that’s got me down, it’s the weather.  On Monday, December 27^th, I woke up to 11 inches of snow at my house in suburban Albany, NY.  As I shoveled my car out, I noticed that the snow was light, fluffy, and fantastic.  I knew the drive would be rough, but I took my time, drove slowly, and avoided becoming one of the many cars that had found their way into ditches.  As I drove, I listened to relaxed, adult-alternative oriented music to calm my mood, and keep me from wanting to go too fast. I actually started enjoying the trip.  Sure, it was taking forever (and I was going to miss my 8:30 ski instructing sign in time), but I love new snow, and the feeling of anticipation was building as the dulcet melodies of Jack Johnson soothed my nerves.

Until I started looking at the snow depth.  The road conditions were still bad, but the snowfall amounts were deteriorating as I moved north.  7 inches in Saratoga.  4 Inches in Glens Falls.  2 inches in Warrensburg.  By the time I got to North Creek, there was no snow on the ground at all.  The only weather that greeted me was a blistering wind when I stepped out of the car.  Ugh.

On top of that, I went to 3 lineups and didn’t get one lesson.  So I drove all that way, used all that gas money, avoided all those ditches, and listened to all that Colbie Caillat for nothing!!!!  The skiing wasn’t even that good! The wind and cold associated with the storm made being outside feel miserable (although the snowmakers have done a great job keeping the snowpack skiable on a lot of my favorite trails).  So we got all of the bad parts of a winter storm (wind and cold), but none of the good parts (epic snowfall).  What a waste.

After this past week, I look back on that day and I still think it’s a bit of a waste.  But there was a moment during that day that I was actually very content.  I was relaxed, alert, and giddy with anticipation about skiing fresh snow, teaching great lessons, and celebrating afterwards.  With that idea in mind, I decided that my New Years Resolutions for this year should contain a bunch of chances for these types of moments.  While I might not be able to complete all of my resolutions, I still want to have chances to look around and say “Right here, in this moment, I’m happy.”  A second thing I wanted to do for this year was try to make more progress on the goals that I have.  My list from last year didn’t go very well, and I need to start making things happen.  Here’s an idea from a website:

Do a little every day. Take small steps towards your big goals every day, even if it means spending 60 seconds checking out a relevant website before bed.

Ha! So I can help achieve my resolutions by browsing the internet?   These are going to be easier than I thought:

1. Film, Edit, and Finish a quality ski movie for the year
2. Backcountry ski at least 5 times
3. Bike Commute 50 times this year
4. Explore at least 5 new-to-me mountain bike areas in the Northeast
5. Learn more about bicycle repair, acquire some tools and start wrenching my bikes
6. Make at least one blog post every month that makes people want to be where I am

 That last one is tricky, because I haven’t really focused the blog in that way before.  It’s more of a “thoughts and musings” blog, instead of a “here are my adventures” blog.  But those are the kind of things that I like reading, so I’m going to try to put up some cool content up (even if it’s just a short video of a powder shot or rock drop on a bike).  As for the first few on the list, I tried to attach some numbers to some previous goals that had gone unfulfilled.  I figure if I set a concrete number, it’s easier to track my progress towards the goal.

But maybe I’m thinking too much.  According to this article, the best way to get that happy/content feeling is to just get in a hot tub:

Hot tubs improve nervous system health. One of the reasons hot tubs feel so relaxing is because they actually balance the opposing functions within the nervous system – the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Hot water therapy reduces the effect of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the major cause of harmful stress. The positive effects of hot water therapy on the nervous system have actually been observed long after the individual actually leaves the water, showing that hot tubs help produce long term benefits that include lowered stress, relaxation, and a sense of well being. 

 Nice . . . Now I just need to find one with speakers for my Jack Johnson CDs . . .