Yesterday Kim and I attended closing day at Vail, just as we did last year. We did about three of four slush-filled runs throughout the day, but that was okay as there was so much other stuff going on as part of the Spring Back to Vail celebration. We witnessed the large season ending party at the top of the mountain, the pond skimming competition, and finally a Guster concert in Vail Village. Many in the crowd had costumes on, or retro ski gear, and many were openly enjoying beers, champagne, etc. Nothing seen during this wild day can be unexpected.
The Pond Skimming competition
The Guster show was great! The weather was perfect and the crowd was very well behaved. It wasn’t a large turnout, but there were plenty of people packed in close to enjoy the concert. We were able to get fairly close to the stage and had a great view, despite a couple of trees. I really enjoyed this show after having their last performance at the Mile High Music Festival nearly ruined by some obnoxious neighboring music. The sounds was good enough, though the band complained a couple of times about the elevation messing up their equipment. They even made up a rather funny impromptu song about the downside of being so many feet above the sea. We had a great time and it was a good close to the season.
Guster playing Spring Back to Vail
With most resorts closed, here are our stats from this past snowboarding season. As always, we will likely add a couple of days at Arapahoe Basin as the spring moves forward.
- Breckenridge – 5 days
- Vail – 3 days
- Keystone – 3 days (Kim missed one of these)
- Beaver Creek – 2 days
- Copper – 2 days
That’s a total of only 15 days, which is pretty close to last year, but not nearly as good as two years ago. Once again, the snow left a lot to be desired this year. The best days of the season were only a couple of weeks ago and most of our enjoyable days have been in the warmer months of this year. Still we had many good memories and lots of fun times with visitors throughout the year. Here’s to next season!
My week in Kansas City has flown by. I didn’t even get the chance to write yesterday, which is a pretty rare occurrence, though something that seems to be happening recently much more often. I’ve seen some friends, hung out with coworkers, eaten some good food, and even taken a ride in a Porsche. They had a farewell lunch for me today, as I hope this is the last time I’m back in KC for work, though time will tell. If it is the last time, I’m sure we will be back for a fun weekend in the future. So long Kansas City.
I hope I don’t jinx myself, but my allergies seem to have disappeared. While others are reaching for allergy pills, I haven’t taken any since sometime last year and I’m feeling fine. I brought along some Claritin on my trip this week but the only time I’ve opened them was to give one to a coworker. I’ve heard that this is one of the worst allergy seasons in recent years, so my cure couldn’t have come at a better time.
*knocks on wood*
Great news today for many Denver based travelers, including Kim and myself. Our beloved Frontier Airlines is staying! For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Frontier was acquired late last year by Republic Airways, who also purchased Midwest Airlines earlier last year. Recently it was announced that the two would be merging into one brand, and many were fearful that the Frontier name, slogan, and animals would be gone forever. Fortunately, the announcement today was that the merged brand would remain Frontier Airlines. Over the next twelve to eighteen months, all of Midwest’s planes will be painted with the Frontier livery, complete with their own unique animal on the tail, starting with a yet to be named badger. In addition, Midwest’s famous freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies will eventually make their way onto all Frontier flights. What a trade!
Over the weekend Kim and I participated in a hut trip hike. If you recall from last year, I went on a similar trip and loved every minute of it. This time our group of 14 hiked up to the Section House up on Boreas Pass. This year’s trip was much easier than last, even if we wouldn’t have gotten lost last year. This year the trailhead was at 10,350′ compared to 8,620 last year. And the hut was at 11,481′ this year and 11,180 last. So you can tell by the elevation gain that it was a slightly uphill hike, but not very strenuous. In fact, the route we took was along a gravel road that is open in the warmer months, and it used to be a railroad, so the grade is very low. Despite that, the hike still managed to deliver blisters and sore bones. I guess this will always happen after hiking six and a half miles. We had a great time though, and look forward to possibly taking a trip to a hut in the summer.
A lot of things have been happening at work recently. My new team has been hard at work to release a new version of our product, as well as prepare for a big trade show next week. I started dedicating more time to the project this week, and am now up to 75% of my time. The other 25% is still spent on the transition for the old project. But it looks like that is going to change again for next week. I will likely be taking a last-minute trip to Kansas City on Monday to help directly in the transition, and I won’t have much time to work on my new project. I’m really enjoying the new project and I’m looking forward to getting back to it after next week. Another great thing is that I will soon be getting my own work laptop to replace my aging office desktop. That will really help out, though I wish I already had it for next week’s trip.
Prior to the fun of last weekend, I had a 10:30pm hockey game on Friday night. Normally my games are fun and a nice break from the work week, but playing this late on a weekend night was a downer. Not to mention that despite our best efforts, we still came up short with a very close loss. The team was happy to have at least won a game in the playoffs, but still we should have won this game as well. With the loss our season came to an end. We’ve called it quits until sometime around Memorial Day, when we will take the ice with new uniforms and improved focus. The upstairs bar at the rink is sponsoring our team by giving us a free team pitcher after each game (a $20+ value). It doesn’t take much to bribe our team.
After our big hike at the Grand Canyon, we spent the rest of the day working our way to Sedona. We traveled east out of Grand Canyon National Park along AZ-64 and then south along US-89. When we reached Flagstaff, we stopped for dinner at the Beaver Street Brewery. We had excellent […]
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This past Saturday I headed up to Breckenridge along with Kim and our friends Ryan and Rob. We made plans earlier in the week to attend the Breckenridge Beer Festival and arrived just after the event had started. It was fairly cold and windy out, but that didn’t stop a pretty decent sized crowd from gathering outside to taste unlimited beer samples from over twenty breweries. The website said, “Rain or Shine, we’ll be there and hopefully so will you!” We didn’t see any rain, but there was plenty of snow.
On to the sampling. The first surprise was the beer from the Rifle Brewing Company. I’d never heard of the city of Rifle, Colorado, let alone the brewery there, but their IPA was delicious as was their Anvil Point Amber. Another brewery that I had never heard of before was the Grand Lake Brewing Company, also from Colorado. While I wasn’t as blown away by their brews, they did have a couple of tasty entries. Of the larger breweries, I was very happy to get a taste of small batch offering from Deschutes. I walked up to their booth just as a bottle of Hop Henge IPA came out of hiding and encouraged them to give me a pour. It went fast, but all in our group were able to try it. We also enjoyed beers from Great Divide, Kona, Breckenridge (obviously), Avery, and many more that I am forgetting. It was a great festival, and my only suggestion would be for them to add more restrooms into the mix, as we had to wait for fifteen minutes or longer each time.
Earlier this morning the initial lineup for the 2010 Mile High Music Festival was announced. This will be the third annual festival, and I’m hoping it mostly goes back to the way it was the first time, as I’ve mentioned before. They are definitely off to a good start by announcing that the Dave Matthews Band will be back to headline the festival. DMB headlined one of the nights the first year, and was able to bring in a very large crowd. This helps explain why there wasn’t a Colorado date when the band announced their summer tour a few months ago.
In addition to DMB, I am very excited to see Steve Miller Band, Cypress Hill, The Samples, Amos Lee, ALO, Weezer, My Morning Jacket, Ozomatli, Railroad Earth, and many others. The full lineup is below, though I’m sure there will be more additions at a later time.
Saturday August 14th
- Jack Johnson
- Steve Miller Band
- Slightly Stoopid
- NAS & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley
- Phoenix
- Keane
- Cypress Hill
- Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band
- The Samples (All Original Members)
- Keller Williams
- Donovan Frankenreiter
- Rusted Root
- Amos Lee
- One EskimO
- Mayer Hawthorne & The County
- ALO
- The Constellations
- The Motet
- Bobby Long
- MyNameIsJohnMichael
Sunday August 15th
- Dave Matthews Band
- Weezer
- My Morning Jacket
- Atmosphere
- Jimmy Cliff
- Train
- Bassnectar
- Ozomatli
- Railroad Earth
- Drive By Truckers
- Punch Brothers
- Tim Reynolds & TR3
- Trevor Hall
- Matt Morris
- BoomBox
- Oh My Stars!
- Joe Purdy
- The Knew
- Danielle Ate The Sandwich
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