Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

Montana is seriously cold.

Despite all of our ski gear, we're still getting chilly. From a tea-drinking perspective, there is a slightly different issue: it's also very, very dry here.

Even though we get about 12 inches of snow per day here, the rock-bottom humidity makes for cracked hands and dry faces. The retired marine drill-sergeant that we met on the aeroplane specifically recommended that we use hand cream regularly whilst in Montana. When a senior marine recommends something like hand cream, you know the situation is serious.

This must make storing tea particularly tricky. I never leave home without packing my trusty badger-hair brush, yet it's so dry here that the bristles fan out like a cheerleader's pom-pom:

One solution to this problem is hinted at by the presence of two very large white devices tucked away in one of the cupboards in our hotel apartment. A search using Google Images indicates that these are humidifiers:

Plug them into the electrical supply, fill them with several litres of water, and a steady mist of water vapour is released into the atmosphere, to counteract the extreme lack of humidity. Though perhaps (along with air conditioning) one of the least environmentally-friendly atmospheric adjusters that one could obtain, it certainly does the trick. I think any long-terms plans involving Montana (and thus involving moving some pu'er over here) would require a more permanent, less energy-demanding solution to the humidity problem.

Following the previous Half-Dipper tradition of attempting to get weiqi/Go pieces into as many photographs as possible, here's our current best substitute (above). Conveniently, they're made large enough so that one can play with even the most dry, cracked hands...

(As ever, clicking on a photograph will display the complete version.)