With snow on the ground and farolitos lighting up buildings around town, winter is in full swing. This month for Resilient I/O, our team shared their favorite indoor and outdoor tech to stay connected, entertained, and healthy, whether cozying up inside with a hot beverage or heading outside to explore winter wilderness.

Staying In

Play Games

Among Us

Play online or over local WiFi with 4-10 players as you attempt to prep your spaceship for departure, but beware as one will be an Impostor bent on killing everyone! Crewmates can win by completing all tasks or discovering and voting the Impostor off the ship. The Impostor can use sabotage to cause chaos, making for easier kills and better alibis.

Among Us is available on iOS and Android, and it is free, and fun for all ages. Among Us has become a regular team building event on our calendars, and many on our team play this game with family members who live far away, as a fun remote activity to keep in touch.

Animal Crossing

In this game from Nintendo, each player has their own "deserted" island to improve, design, and customize to their heart’s content. But you don’t have to play alone! Visiting the unique islands created by loved ones on Animal Crossing has come to feel similar to visiting each other's houses IRL (in real life), which has made staying at home during the pandemic feel less lonely. Find out more at https://www.animal-crossing.com.

Play Music

Piano

Choose your piano. If you’re interested in learning the piano, our team recommends you consider a Yamaha Electric Piano and a pair of comfy over-ear headphones. This combination gives you the flexibility to play anywhere and tune out distractions around you while you practice.

Choose a guide. After you’ve decided on your instrument, you’ll need to decide how you’ll learn. While in-person instruction isn’t an option, our team recommends the following books to get started:

"Alfred's Basic Adult Piano" course is a familiar and much beloved starting point for new pianists.
The "A Dozen A Day" series of books by Edna-Mae Burnam is also a great place to start for a more adventurous beginner
The "Mikrokosmos" series by Bela Bartok is a great followup to “A Dozen A Day.” It gets difficult quickly and uses unusual harmonies, but it's effective and very cleverly designed.

Guitar / Bass / Ukulele

Fender Play offers a great experience for learning to play electric or acoustic guitar, bass, or ukulele. Whether you want to focus on technique or learn your favorite songs, the app allows you to take either approach, and tracks your progress as you work through bite size video lessons, in style-based learning paths. The app has a free trial, so you can give it a shot and see if it works for you. Learn more at https://www.fender.com/play.

Getting Out

Just Stepping Out

Solo Stove Fire Pit

If you miss being outside, but don’t want to venture too far from home, this sleek, innovative, and portable stainless steel fire pit will help you keep your hands warm. We find this fire pit burns hot and produces very little smoke, which the makers attribute to the unique design that optimizes for the right balance of containment and airflow to yield an extremely efficient burn. To read more, head over to https://www.solostove.com.

Go for a Ride

Slopes: Ski & Snowboard Tracking App

This app gives you details about the conditions and runs at thousands of mountains worldwide, then tracks your day on the local mountain to provide you with stats like the number of runs, time on lifts, average speed, top speed, elevation change, and more. Slopes will also show you animated playback of all your paths, layered onto a 3D rendering of your local mountain using topographical data, and to take a step further into the future, use the Augmented Reality feature to visualize your day on the mountain right on your tabletop. Slopes is available for iOS, with a feature-limited version for Android, coming soon.

Strava

On those warm days, when the ice on the roads and the snow on the trails melts, several members of our team use Strava to track all their running and cycling. Strava turns every iPhone and Android device into a sophisticated running and cycling computer, recording your route and measuring all kinds of performance metrics. You can use this data to improve your own performance, and share your workouts and races with friends. Find Strava on the App Store for iPhone and Google Play for Android.

Explore the Backcountry

Snowshoes

Winter doesn’t mean you have to stop hiking our beautiful mountains. Several of our team members love snowshoes, as a simple technology to help them get out into nature and cover some beautiful miles floating atop the powder. It’s wonderful seeing familiar trails anew, as the trees change, and the forest floor is blanketed with snow.

And if your four-legged friend loves trekking out with you in warm weather, they’ll love getting their feet wet in the snow!

Ski & Splitboard Skins

If you love downhill skiing or snowboarding, but you’re looking for a way to really earn the ride, consider skinning, where you use appropriate skis (or special snowboards that split into skis) that can be fitted with synthetic “skins” on the bottom. This surprising tech allows you to work your way up the mountain. Once you reach the top, you remove the skins, pack them in your bag, and ride down (if using a split snowboard, remember to clamp it together first!).

You can skin up groomed runs at the ski mountain, or research safe backcountry options to get off the beaten path. Members of our team find this activity to be fun, challenging, and an extremely rewarding way to explore new terrain.

GPS / Communicator

When in the backcountry, safety considerations are paramount. If you venture way out on skins or snowshoes, consider taking a GPS device. Some include satellite communications technology to facilitate location sharing and texting with loved ones.

Most of the time, this will simply provide a nice way for your family to share in your adventures by following your path while you’re out on the trails. But if an issue arises, just keeping a device like our favorite Garmin inReach Mini in your bag allows you to text your loved ones, or in a dire emergency, send out an SOS for rescue assistance at your exact location (but don’t forget the satellite communications features require a seasonal service plan).

Resilient I/O: Inside/Outside