Slug Bugs, Music, Cold Weather, Snowmobile Rides and Closing Time

When you wake up in the morning, and read the weather report, only to find out that the wind chill for your scheduled destination is -25 degrees, you get chills just reading the report. Well, that’s exactly how it went…my goosebumps had their own zip codes. Winter Park, had an obscene amount of new snow over the weekend, and this was the day I was going to teach Emily (Colleen’s friend) how to snowboard. This would also mark day two for Cobes. It was all of a couple degrees out in the morning, and that made the driving slow because there was snow on the ground, and it was cold out, and it was hard to get motivated. But here are the girls looking glamorous as ever first thing in the morning!

Not to mention, they had baked me cookies! MMMM! What better way to butter up your driver than bring him homemade cookies! Score! After the long trek up to Winter Park, up and over Berthoud Pass, we arrive at Winter Park, and the first words out of Em’s mouth were, “Is it closed?” There were absolutely NO CARS to be found! If any of you have ever snowboarded over a holiday, or Spring Break, you know how big of crowd can be waiting to board the lifts…well, let me show you one advantage to being a local:

Shizam! The only car in the whole parking lot!!! And this is at 11am! Haha, Gugals would be happy as I cut one giant cookie before sliding to a stop to park. Snow Ninja Emily jumped out and made sure that nobody would take our spot…

Then again, if you were to have a look at this next picture, who would mess with these two girls in the FIRST place? They act like they are the only ones on the mountain or something!

So, we get on our first lift after giving Emily some quick instructions on the LEAST likely way she will kill herself when she tries to get off the lift. She did fairly well, but of course an ugly patch of ice jumped out and attacked her snowboard and caused her to stumble over her untied shoelace which somehow got caught up in her untied leash, that she regretted tying, and….well, you get the point. She did a good job picking up the basics, and with all the fresh pow she was riding mighty fine! Co was flying compared to last weekend! What an awesome sight to see! She felt fearless she said in all the fluffy stuff. We make it to the next lift, and this time Emily made it, and it put a twinkle in my eye…Student One was flying down the mountain, and Student Two was now getting off lifts correctly! However, on the way down run #2, Emily stopped and I thought something was wrong…but don’t worry folkes, she just lost an earring and had to put it back in, but here’s the photo to show she successfully pulled off this daring maneuver while being in the middle of a run!

I think it’s time for some Action photos! Here is Emily…remember folks, this is her first day!

I was trying to get a picture of Colleen, but for *some* reason, I caught her in the middle of doing some sort of a cartwheel on the snow, with her snowboard still attached! In other words…she caught her front edge!

But as you can see, here are two pictures of her in better form….yay Cobes!

Emily really didn’t like walking with one foot strapped into her snowboard. She thought it was weird and that she looked goofy, and so, she preferred her own style of riding. It’s called walking. Well, walking with your snowboard. That has a better ring to it. Look for her signature clothing line due out in the Spring.

So who is this guy in the picture next to Colleen with the awesome backdrop?! Oh wait…I think that might be me!

Here’s a pic of the two girls, high up on the mountain! Watch out, these girls already ride blues!

Right after those two pictures, I decide that I have to make a little part into the woods a little bit to find some fresh powder, and well mainly to relieve myself because I had to go pretty bad. What’s that about not eating the yellow snow? Oh…right…don’t eat it! So yeah, I’m in the middle of these trees, and the powder stashes are so deep that I get stuck and can’t get back over to the run I want, soooooo, I am forced to go down the wrong way. Here is a quick picture of my line in the trees….

So there I am, cursing myself for not just holding it, and I know the girls are waiting for me on the run right next to me, but I can’t get there. It just so happens the only run I *could* climb out of the snow and get on takes me down the complete OPPOSITE side of where the girls are. So, I eventually crawl out of waist deep snow, strap back on my board, then book it down to the lift. I take the lift up and then am bombing it down Mock Turtle (hey, just trying to live up to the name) and there was this ski patrol guy who was closing off the run, but before he could close it off I went down it! Muhahaha! Well, I’m carving a nice line in the uncut snow, and I come upon 2 other ski patrol guys, who then proceed to assume that I must have ducked a rope to get on Mock Turtle, and so they tackle me! One of them went so far as to use his ski pole to push up against my neck to hold me down! What the heck!?! I am screaming for them to let me go, as I’m wrestling so they can’t cut my passess off, but the weight of these two guys with all their medical stuff in their backpacks were pretty heavy! However, I managed to sorta squiggle free and explain what I was up to. After I told them that there were two girls that were over on this side of the mountain that I was in a hurry to meet up with because they were probably wondering where I was, they decided to use the radio to see if my story had any validity in it. Well, it turns out that one of them had seen two girls being taken off the mountain on snowmobile just 10 seconds before they gangraped me. So here I’m thinking Cobes and Em got hurt! Turns out it wasn’t the two girls I was with that got taken off the mountain. So, then, they start chasing after me again, as if they were going to tackle me again! Well, then, guy at lift down below hops on his radio to report that there are two girls with snowboards waiting for a guy down at the lift. Well, that made my story check out, and the nutbaskets let me go! I meet up with the girls and explain what happened. But this was only the beginning!

We then take the lift up, but then for some strange reason, we decide to take yet ANOTHER lift up even higher as it was closing! Mind you, the previous lift was closing when we were on it, and they waited for me to show up. Now, the guy was closing it as Emily was walking in style with her snowboard at her hip up to the lift! After getting on, we make it to the very top of Mary Jane. There, we find five more ski patrol guys waiting for us! Yikes! What is this!? They were then, escorting us down the mountain! Making sure we made it alright. Well, after about 5 minutes they got tired of waiting, and told Emily to get on the snowmobile, as she was going too slow and she had a long way to go! Noooooo!!! They are taking my friend! So then, Cobes and I remain on the mountain and are riding down and it seems like every ski patrol guy on the mountain had to tell us that we were taking up their time and that they wanted to go home, and blah blah blah. Eventually one told me where we could find Em. It turns out to be logically the FARTHEST possible place from where my car was parked. Seriously, you would think if one car was parked in a lot, they could just drop you off at your car. But nooooo!

After much exhaustion, we made it back to my Blazer, only after Emily had turned into a popsicle and her teeth were chattering so loud I thought they were going to pop out. Only after we caught, what was it, two buses that still didn’t even manage to take us back to my car. *sigh*…but you know what…it was an AWESOME day of snowboarding, and everybody had a good time.