Subaru's, The Heist, NOS, Cold Weather, Ewok Growths and Choda Boy
An online account of the happenings Dec 20-23, 2002. Boulder, CO.
The trip kind of came together in the last month. Luckily, I got the discount on Cullen and Brant's ski passes for ordering them with my season pass and getting them 14 days in advance. Those last two weeks flew by fast, and the next thing I know, in flew Cullen and his plane, with Brant riding shotgun. The landing was a little sketch, as there were gale force winds coming off the mountains. However, the landing was a success, and the trip had begun.
The first night the three of us went to the Southern Sun so that they could get a taste of some Colorado microbrews, which btw, is probably *not* the best idea when trying to get aclimated to the altitude change...but alas, it's a lot more fun! Brant immediately showed us the big spender that he is by dropping $15 to the cute bartender for $6 in beer. We calmed him down by feeding him lots of hummis. Oh, and a pitcher of beer helped too. After dinner, Brant and I climbed on my climbing wall in frigid temperatures, while Cullen (the smart one), slept soundly on the futon. Eventually, by around 2 or 3 am, we were all sleeping soundly. Seven o'clock came early! It was time to rent gear. While they did that I got my board waxed so I could go super fast. (more on that later) By 10am, we were fed with doughnuts from King Soopers, stocked up on NOS (snickers bars), and caught up with SportsCenter and on our way to Breckenridge. Here is a departing picture, Brant didn't exactly know what to make of me taking pictures, especially of him, and after he has had very little sleep.
Upon arrival in Breck, we were all in a good mood, the snow looked great, we got free parking, and we got our gear on for our first day. (notice how clean the Blazer still is)
The first day of skiing (or riding, if you're enlightened enough to snowboard), is always a wake-up call. Apparently Brant was suffering from lack of sleep, and lack of decent gloves. We tried out the new Peak 7, which turned out to have the best powder. Conditions were excellent and it was agreed this was ten times better than last season. We all were getting pretty tired in the afternoon, but shots of NOS, we were good to go. After skiing, we went to Keystone to find a restaurant. We first stopped at this Saloon, where we had a beer, but soon discovered prices for food were $18-35 for one plate! Yeah, we bailed. We then found the best mexican restaurant I've ever been to. It's right across the street. The Chipotle Mushroom Quesidilla's were marvelous and Cullen said his enchilada's hit the spot fantasticly! Brant ordered the hugest plate of nachos I've ever seen, and his words were, "Please, just take it away." to the waitress who didn't understand why he didn't want a doggie bag. I elected to skip out of night skiing because I was tired from working the previous night, and then driving, then skiing all day long, and if I was going to drive home I didn't want to be dead, so I sat in the car and tried to nap while Cullen and Brant enjoyed night skiing with nobody on the slopes.
We came home, and again Cullen went immediately to sleep while Brant and I stayed up. I had work again, and we chatted about his laptop which seems to have no hope. Actually I think we might have done that the first night, but whatever, the point is, we again stayed up late when we should have been sleeping. Brant, in a rage snapped a CD in his hands and it shattered all over the floor. (He later cleaned it up, so no worries!) Choda Boy kept coming down and following us all around the house. For those of you who don't know who Choda Boy is, he's the character from Matt Stone and Trey Parker's movie called Orgasmo. But he's also known as my roommate Mark. You see, not to rant here too much, but Mark is the biggest poser ever in my mind. He claims to be this huge kayaker and even offered Brant to go with him sometime, but have I ever seen Mark out kayaking? No. All Mark does is sit in his room and get drunk and aspire to be some big rock star. You don't even KNOW how far he needs to go for this to happen. He can't even play the guitar. He tries though, inbetween shots, and ranting about what he used to be. You see, he was unemployed for over a year and a half. He has a college degree in Biology, but yet, now he makes coffee for Starbucks at $7.15/hr. No comment. So now you know why we call him Choda Boy. He's just weird. Anyhow, the following morning, I gladly recieved Cullen's invitation for him to drive to Vail. It's a long drive, and I said I'd drive home if he just drove there. He tore into the Blazer, getting us there only an hour and a half after we left Boulder, and he also ripped into all the lesbian driving Subaru Outback drivers there were. If only you knew how many there were. (Later in the trip he counted 40 just as we drove 2 miles to get out of town, that's right 40 Subaru's!) Oh, here's a picture of Brant, obviously suffering:
Vail is always interesting. You meet the ritzy upper class couples. Especially when you ride in the gondola with them. We had the pleasure to find out the gondola travels at 8mph (like that statistic can't be found on their map), and that we were at 8,400ft, thanks to this guys GPS receiver he had out during the ride. Meanwhile, this guy who sounded like he was from Brooklyn complained he had a mole on his foot and that it was an Ewok and complained to him that his boot was crushing it. Then there was this girl who had a ring the size of J Lo's. We headed to Blue Sky as fast as we could! There were massive amounts of powder to be had back there, and Cullen loved all the lifts available for us to take. We worked the entire mountain, skiing or riding just about every part of it, what a day! We ended it by downing some beers and some burgers at this place right in Vail. After that, we drove over to Keystone and again, enjoyed a wonderful night of night skiing under the lights. After all that, we finally drove home, getting home around 10:30pm, and this time we all hit the sack pretty soon after that, to prepare for the All-Day Keystone seige.
We woke up early, and were out the door by 8am. Not too shabby. The drive to Keystone was uneventful, however, it was super cold. Take a look at the car thermometer in this next pic. Yeah, that's right, it was all of one degree out. Awesome!
We decided that we had better do a photo op now, before we were all tired, and looked like crap, so here comes some pictures! The first picture is of Brant unloading our snowboards from the rack on top of my Blazer. Notice the new helmet he is wearing! The previous night I had helped convince Cullen and Brant to get buckets for their heads, because I swear by mine. I know it's saved me many times. Just take a look at all the marks on it sometime!
Here is Cullen, ever ready to go, looking at the slopes, ready to hit them hard and fast.
Ahhh, yes, a picture of me looking silly wondering what's going on. I think I unfortunately got dubbed Trail Master by the end of the trip because I was leading them down all these trails that they probably didn't want to go down.
Brant's suiting up to cross the South Pole, putting on his head condom. Oh, I mean his Balaclava. Hehehe.
Just so you can see part of Keystone, here's a picture of one of the runs by the Peru lift. Notice if you will, (not just by ANY coincedence), the Subaru Outback in the picture. *smile*
Keystone was a blast. At least I thought so. I don't think Cullen and Brant liked me taking them down Wolverine too much...and the powder on the bowl that we hiked up was humbling. Yes, you read that right, we actually HIKED at altitude to get to some fresh pow-pow! Cullen learned that he needs to lean super far back on his ski's if he want's any hope in turning. We stopped for lunch and spent a small fortune getting very little food. It didn't matter, we needed go juice. After lunch everybody was ready to continue on and we went hard the rest of the day. We then sat and drank a couple pitchers of beer, watching the Denver Bronco's lose. Cullen was feeling really good when we went out to go night skiing. He was still sweating from the chicken wings! We discovered new trails for night skiing, and it was so uncrowded we all took care of business in the trees without being interrupted. Well, except for Cullen who got asked if he was ok when he was taking a leak.
We then went back to the Blazer for the final time. Now it was time to test out my plan, aka "The Heist". You see, Keystone has pay parking and free parking. The pay parking just *happens* to be right next to the lifts. That's the reason it costs more. However, we had noticed that when we would drive over from other resorts to Keystone for night skiing, that nobody would be manning the booth after 6pm. It then occured to me, that if nobody is there after 6, you could just go there in the morning, take a ticket, then, stay for night skiing, and then leave at 8pm, and not worry about paying for the close-in parking! I won't reveal the lot we were in, or the lift, because I don't want everybody taking advantage of this sweet deal, but if you msg me online, I might be kind enough to let you in on the secret! But, needless to say it worked flawless and we got out without having to pay! Score!
After waking up on Monday, it was discovered there was a small nuclear winter hovering over Oklahoma, dumping inches upon inches of snow, only after a thunderstorm had passed through coating everything with ice! Cullen and Brant were stranded with me for another day! We made way to Denny's for some cheap Grand Slam action, and then we went to Flatiron's mall to do some last minute Christmas shopping, and watch Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It was better than the first I thought, however I got a headache from all the scene switching and lack of sleep from the weekend. Later that night Cullen decided he could make it home, so we went out to his plane, and it wouldn't start. That is, until I gave it a jump from my Blazer and Cullen mashed the gas! Engines roared and off they went, flying back to Oklahoma where they came from, only to return again soon. Both have plans of skiing/snowboarding within a month I do believe. However, this trip was really enjoyable and they are welcome back anytime! And with that, I'm signing out! byeeee!
--Matt
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