Colorado 2011 Part Two

Posted on by Jordan

Hey look! An actual picture! Part two actually starts a little before that picture was taken, but it’s a fun place to start.

We made it to the Copper mountain ski area with a few hours of sunlight left, and time to explore before the kick-off dinner for the conference. It was sunny and clear, making the day one of those amazing winter days you seem to only get in the mountains. It should have felt cold, but it wasn’t bad walking around with a coat on. Sunshine is an amazing thing, I know we technically get sunny days during February in Des Moines, but they just don’t have the same kick.

After a beautifully scenic walk around the little resort area, we headed into the ski shop to pickup our rental equipment. About two minutes into that process, Heather had what she continues to describe as the most shocking revelation of the entire trip. I had frequently said things like “Heather and I are going skiing next week.”  Internally I knew I meant “although I will be using a snowboard” but apparently I didn’t communicate that with Heather. To say she was surprised would be an understatement! She quickly adapted to the news, but did insist that I add a helmet to my rental load-out. As a side note, the helmet was a good option, and I would recommend it to everyone.

The next morning, Heather had to be at meetings really early, although she did get a great breakfast out of the deal. I slept in as best I could (this trip was rough for me… as you can no doubt tell) and then wandered over to a little coffee shop for a “waffle” and some coffee. I put quotes around waffle, because they were running some sort of pastry dough through a waffle iron, and selling it as a waffle. Not that I am complaining really, I just don’t know if that counts as a waffle. Anyway, the coffee was good and the pastry thing was good too once I accepted it’s true nature. It was kind of strange to just be hanging out waiting for things to start around the base camp area. Every other skiing experience I have had had started a long ways from the actual ski area, so mornings were rushing to get everyone and 50 cubic yards of winter-sport related junk loaded into a car and over to the mountain. I don’t know if it’s worth it really, but if you have to stay at the base of the mountain expect a much more peaceful morning.

Eventually Heather got out of her meetings and the lifts opened up. We started to gear up to get in line, and found that Heather was having issues with her boots snapping into her skis. She graciously encouraged me to make a run without her while she went back into the ski shop to figure out what the issue was.

I know it wasn’t her intention to make me look awesome by the time we skied together, but it was the end result. I hadn’t been on a snowboard for… about five years, so I was a little bit rusty. On the bright side, Copper Mountain is huge. By the time I made it back down to the base-camp area, all those old reflexes were starting to work again. You might think this would make it harder for us to stay together if I was starting to ramp up to competency, and Heather still needed to warm up, but really I find it harder to take it slow than run at a moderately fast speed, so the warm-up run was beneficial in a number of ways.

After our initial run, we figured out a system for skiing “together.” We would ride the lift up, then split up at the first fork in the trail. We would each continue at a comfortable pace, I would ride the lift up, ski down again, and then Heather would be ready to ride the lift up with me again.

Beyond that, there are only a few other skiing related notes left to mention. First that Heather really did enjoy it after a little practice, a fact that made me glad. Before our first run, I think we both were a little concerned that she would hate it, and it would just take a lot of fun out of the trip. I don’t know if Heather liked it enough to put it on top of her ideal vacation destinations for next year, but she at least enjoyed it. The second note is that I had one truly bad crash (and only one) the end result of that is a rib that still hurts when I laugh two weeks later.

Off the mountain, we just enjoyed getting to spend more time together than we would during a normal week. Our room ceased to be a quiet little hangout on the second day, when our neighbors arrived. We quickly learned that the walls were paper-thin, and that our neighbors consisted of a “guys trip” intent on cutting loose for the weekend. Ideas like “inside-voices” were not something they brought with them for this trip. Lucky for us, skiing wore them out as much as it did us, so everybody spend most of the time indoors sleeping.

That covers most of what is noteworthy about the second portion of our trip.

-Jordan

Colorado 2011, Part One

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I seem to be on a trend of going cold places in winter.

I don’t quite know how that happened, except to say that we aren’t rally devoted to the idea… it just happens.

Our trip to Colorado at the end of February was initiated by a work conference Heather had been asked to attend.

So, let me back up for a second… You remember the speeds we each used when cross-country skiing? I know it’s a single data point, but it stands as a clue that Heather might not be as interested in high-speed winter sports as I am. That being said, when there was a trip to a ski resort in the middle of winter, I was kind of excited. Heather thought it would be fun… in her defense though, she had to work part of the time, so I had a lot of reasons to be more excited than she was.

Anyway, exceptions aside, we were both ready for a few days away from work.

Heather actually managed a few more days away than I did, heading down to KC two days early to visit some friends and then spend an entire day babysitting our one and most favorite nephew ! By all accounts it was fun, but more work than she expected! Who knew an 11-month-old could be so much work?

We boarded a plane from KC to Denver bright and early Wednesday morning. Thanks to the time-zone weirdness, we landed almost the same time we took off. Then off to the rental place. Apparently rental cars are in high demand leaving from the Denver airport on a Wednesday, not a problem though, we have a reservation! Only, the lady at the desk told us our reservation didn’t exist.

This is the point where you would expect the customer service person, the closest thing to a rental car expert we can find in the moment, to spring into action, providing us options and ultimately a car.

We got a blank stare. With some prompting we were assured that there “aren’t any cars left… at any of the companies here” when asked “you mean there isn’t a single car left to rent in Denver?” she said yes. The next question was just “so… what do we do now?” She pointed us to the shuttle-bus stop, and said that we could get back to the airport on the next bus, “maybe one of the other companies has a car I don’t know about”

Back at the airport, we power-walked our way to the only rental-car booth with a huge “cars available” sign sill showing. (it really felt like we should run… but one doesn’t want to stand out in the airport, who knows what they might mistake you for.) Let me tell you about the booth, unlike the other booths, this one lacked a few key items: name we had ever heard of before, a computer, a phone, any furnishings beyond the counter and a chair for the solitary staff member working the booth. The guy assured us “don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of ‘us’ ether, before I got this job… but I guess ‘we’ are big out west” He then assured us they had cars left, talked from memory about the price and options we would have, then wrote our desired car on a scrap of paper. Scrap of paper in hand, we headed out to yet another bus stop. After watching every other rental-car bus pass about three times, our bus finally arrived. The ride was normal, until we got to the ‘T’ intersection leading where you would turn to go into the rental car row. Our bus turned left instead of right. About a mile in the wrong direction and we were in the parking lot for a mostly vacant industrial strip. There were rental cars though! Dirty rental cars, but rental cars. Inside we learned that they were having problems with the car wash, but not to worry the car would be fine. A few sheets of paperwork later, and we had some keys! The instructions were to: “just wander around pushing the panic button on the remote, you will find it eventually”

Low and behold, that tactic worked perfectly, despite it’s lack of professionalism. Once in our car, we found that it had less than 300 miles on it, and was wonderfully clean– on the inside. After that, we stopped for a quick and uneventful lunch and headed up to check into the place we were staying.

hmm sorry I didn’t make it to a part where we have a picture, but the wall-of-text is sufficient to make me think I should close part 1.

-Jordan

Two Years

Posted on by Jordan

January 24th marked the end of our second year of marriage.

I just dug around the blog, and found that I never actually put up a post detailing the first year’s activities.

So, on year zero (the honeymoon) we were in Colorado skiing.

Year one, we went to a local “paint your own pottery” place. That wasn’t terrible, but the end results of Heather’s work: cute, my work: sad. I guess they will both last forever, and that’s something. The only downside is, someday our children will ask why we have a plate dad made in preschool arts-and-crafts.

Now that your up to speed, this year we did something outdoors again!

Oh wait, another tangent! When we set our wedding date in January, people often said things like “well at least you can go someplace warm on your honeymoon” or “yeah, but you can go on trips to the beach for your anniversary.”  I have to admit that I did little to kill off those ideas, because saying “Bah, you just need a better coat and to move around a little” isn’t really what they wanted to hear.

Right, so back to this year: Heather found out that the local parks department was hosting an outdoor winter activities workshop this past weekend. We thought it would be a fun alternative to dinner and a movie, so we headed up after church.

They had a really neat program going, and plenty of participants! The first station we encountered was snowshoeing, but they had every single pair of shoes already out, so we trudged on down the trail. Up next was ice fishing.

It didn’t take long to determine that ice fishing wasn’t going to be our thing. I should mention, as you can kind of see from the picture, we had a beautiful sunny day. It was still quite cold, but being outside in the sunlight was a wonderfully refreshing change from our normal lifestyle.

After checking our pole back in with the ranger, we headed over to the cross country ski station. As with the snowshoe station, they had every single item already out in the snow. We were able to put our names and shoe sizes on the board for later that day, letting us wander back over to the snow shoe station.

On the way we found the dog sled team, resting after their exhibition.

The snowshoe station had just a few shoes, but a few is enough for the two of us! Granted, the snow wasn’t anywhere deep enough to really need snow shoes, but we still gave them a try. 🙂

After a loop around the meadow behind the lodge, we headed back over to the cross country ski station. Even having our names on the list didn’t mean it was a painless process, but eventually we had two pair of boots, poles, and skis. We headed down the trail, having no idea what we were doing.

I guess we were just naturals though, because we moved on down the trail without much trouble 🙂 I may have fallen a few times, but that is the price you pay for finding out how fast you can go. Heather stayed on her feet the entire time, although I am sure she doesn’t know how fast she can go yet. We learned that the DNR rents out the skis any day they aren’t offering a free workshop like we were participating in, so maybe Heather can figure that out another day. 😉

-Jordan

The Honeymoon Day Two (Counting Backwards)

Posted on by Jordan

The second to last day we were in Colorado, was our most ambitious day. We planned to ski and go on a sleigh ride.

Our gracious hosts at the bed and breakfast had recommended we try a nearby mountain that was considerably smaller than Winter Park. That sounded like excellent advice, given Heather only had one other trip under her belt and I was planning on trying skis instead of a snowboard.

Let me just say that was some great advice! The ski area “Solvista” only had 3 lifts, small to say the least! It was perfect for our needs though. We got equipment and lift tickets, and headed out to conquer the mountain. The thing I hate about skiing, is that one of the hardest elements happens at the start: getting off the lift. I managed to wobble my way away from the dismount point, and Heather almost pulled it off too.

Neither Heather nor I were feeling too confident for the first run down, so we took our time. I was very glad to have taken skis as they are just so much more maneuverable at low speeds. After two trips down the mountain, we were ready for a break, and it was lunch time. I should again mention how awesome the smaller ski area on a week day was. Our car was parked less than 100 feet from the front door of the main lodge.

After lunch we made one more trip down together, stopping to document our “who can look like the biggest dork” contest:

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Heather thought she had a solid lead, but ultimately couldn’t compete with:

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We had a lot of fun skiing together, but by this time Heather was ready to call it a day. I took a few more quick trips down the mountain, just to see how well I could really do on skis. I still prefer a snow-board, but I found I was comfortable on about the same blue runs in skis as I would have been on a board.

We had just enough time to make it back to our cabin, clean up, and head back out to where the sleigh ride started. The sun had just set when we left the cabin, and it was fully dark by the time we made it to the ranch. The temp readout in our car said -6f. Every other night we were in Colorado the temperature was in the high teens when we went out at night. Suffice to say, the hour-long sleigh ride was perhaps the coldest experience of our lives.

It was also amazing! The sleigh was fully loaded with twelve people, everyone wrapped up with lap blankets, and move slowly through the forest near the ranch. The trees had a perfect coating of snow and, the stars and the moon were beautifully clear through the openings in the trees.

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(note the frozen faces in that picture… we were so cold)

After the sleigh ride, there was a dinner in the somewhat rustic mess-hall. It probably would have been really nice, if the temperature were 20 degrees warmer. The room simply did not have sufficient heaters for the cold conditions. Dinner isn’t quite as relaxing when you eat it while wearing your winter coat and hat. It may not have been a romantic candle lit dinner, but I think it may have created more memories for us to look back on later 🙂

-Jordan