Skiing in Colorado

I got back from Colorado this afternoon which happened to be a day late. I have been replaying the events of the weekend, and it seems like with all that happened to me in a negative way that it shouldn't have been all that great of a weekend. But in actuality I did have a great weekend. It began Thursday when I checked in at the airport and the airline screwed me and charged me for an extra bag. You can only have 2 bags. I had 2 bags and my skis. Next time I will take one of my bags as a carry-on and check it at the gate. That extra bag ended up costing me another $50. A great start to the weekend. I was basically tagging along on a trip that Krum and Russ had put together. So on this ski trip, was Russ and his girlfriend Mana and their dog, Lola. Then we had Krum and his girlfriend, Michelle, Trooper and his girlfriend, Shelly, Goob and his wife, Jen. And we also ran across Russ' roommate, Terry. Russ picked me up from the airport, then the two of us along with Mana and Lola drove up to the condo in Frisco. However, Lola had a bad case of gas. And I think that bad is an understatement. The windows got rolled down on more than one occasion. Friday morning, I woke up not feeling so hot. I am fairly certain that I once again came down with a touch of altitude sickness. We skied at Copper Mountain on Friday. On the last run before we were to meet everyone for lunch I really started to feel sick. I was following Russ and Trooper down the hill and I started to get the mad puking saliva flowing in my mouth. I got a bit lightheaded and had to stop. Once I stopped I began throwing up. But I am a gamer and managed to finish out the rest of the day of skiing. Saturday was another day and with it came another adventure for me. We skied at A Basin. I had been skiing with Terry, and we were trying to meet up with Russ. In an effort to get on the same run that Russ was on, Terry and I cut under one of the ropes that divides the runs. A ski instructor witnessed this and took our lift tickets. This was pretty much all my fault. Terry and I went down to the ski patrol to discuss this incident with the Ski Patrol Supervisor, and when I say Terry and I, I actually mean Terry since I let him do all of the taking. This is where we had the quote of the weekend.
Terry "We aren't here to cause and problems or be trouble makers."
Ski Patrol Guy "This guy is wearing a gorilla suit and you expect me to think that you aren't trouble makers?"
In the end, we did get our lift tickets back. Sunday we were back and skiing at A Basin. Everything seemed to be going rather well for me until the 3rd or 4th run. I was going down a rather steep run, but nothing that I can't handle when I caught a bit of an edge and went down hard. In the process I dislocated my shoulder yet again. Thankfully about 30 yards later as I continued to tumble down the hill, I hit my shoulder just right again and it popped back into place. The rest of that day of skiing was without any more major incidents. Although Trooper did fall off the chair lift while on the same chair as me. And no I didn't push him off. We headed back into Denver after a good half of a day of skiing, grabbed something to eat and then went to the airport. I got all of my bags checked and was waiting at my gate and I went up to desk and they told me that I had been bumped from the flight. Well this really sucked. Two other guys on the flight also got bumped. It was almost comical. There was nothing the three of us could do, we didn't have boarding passes and we watched everyone get on the plane and then the plane leave. I was willing to accept my fate, get my free night in a hotel, and my free round trip future flight. But these other two clowns were going nuts. They wanted to get the plane back to the gate, and when that didn't happen they wanted to be reimburse for all of their lost wages for the next business day. Then they called in the United Airlines Supervisor who went over the procedure for reimbursing people who get bumped from flights at least 5 times. The airline said that we could get our luggage but it would take at least 2 hours. I told them to keep it and that I would be back in the morning and I was going to smell bad. This would be a good time to mention that I decided not to change out of my ski clothes after skiing. Check that, I took the gorilla suit off, but that was it. So this morning when I finally got on a flight I was pretty ripe, even with a shower at the hotel. I got into Milwaukee around 2:30 and went straight to my office and worked until 5 still in my ski clothes. So to summarize my weekend, I got screwed by the airline twice, got altitude sickness, had my lift ticket taken away, and dislocated my shoulder. Nonetheless it was still a great weekend. So check out these pictures from the weekend.

Russ at Copper Mountain with Trooper in the background.

Russ dropping in at Copper Mountain.

Goob bringing in the mini van to the condo.

Krum giving Michelle a $100 bill to buy a Diet Coke.

Group picture at A Basin. Left to right: Krum, Me, Terry, Mana, Russ, Trooper and Shelly.

Russ and Mana at A Basin.

Me with Mana, Michelle and Shelly.

On the ride home from A Basin Saturday night, Goob mentioned that he wanted to be sitting in the hot tub with the smell of brats cooking on the grill. While I normally just make dreams come true for the ladies, this time I decided to help a brother out and I made Goob's dream come true. When we got back I fired up the grill and served up brats to those in the hot tub. As you can see, Goob on the right has a brat in his hand. Before serving Michelle and Paul, I made them keep their hands out of the water for a couple minutes so that they wouldn't make the buns all soggy. And that is Jen in the lower right corner.

This is Lola. Russ and Mana's dog. She was the trip mascot. As I mentioned she had some unbelievably powerful gas. Despite the gas, I will list her number 3 on my list of all time favorite dogs behind Sampson and Jolie. (Two of the dogs that I grew up with.) And in the event that anyone in my family is reading this, yes, Lola is ahead of Patches. Patches was my dog that got hit by a car.

This is the view from the top of A Basin.

On the way to the airport we stopped for some food. After eating Krum decided that the parking lot was the best place to organize all of this stuff for his flight. It looked like he was putting on a rummage sale.

This is me in my hotel room this morning in my ski clothes. I didn't feel like changing after skiing. And then when I got bumped I didn't feel like waiting 2 hours for my bags. So this is all that I had to wear. Those were some ripe socks. I debated about just throwing them out.