Ski Day #12

I only skied for a couple of hours on New Years Eve day. I headed for the T-Bar and Chair 6 on peak 8 which were not open the previous day. The runs in Horseshoe Bowl and under Chair 6 were a lot of fun with good snow conditions.
The town had a number of New Years celebrations. One of the events was a torchlight parade where the ski school employees skied down the mountain at night holding flares. It sounded like it would be cool to see a couple hundred people skiing down the mountain at night, but it was pretty lame. Later in the evening they had fireworks which were pretty good. It kind of sucks that I don't know very many people here yet, so I didn't have anyone to party with. Overall a pretty boring new years eve for me. Now I'm sitting around doing what everyone should do on New Years Day, watching football.

Powder Day

So I've been looking at the job postings for Vail Resorts since I've been here and so far I have yet to see any jobs to my liking (ie easy, short hours and fun). Yesterday a few jobs were posted which I was interested in. My plan for this morning was to head up to the HR office to find out more about these jobs. However, mother nature intervened.
I awoke this morning to find a half foot of fresh snow had fallen overnight in town, and it was still snowing. I think this is a sign from God that I shouldn't get a job and just continue to be a bum. I made the easy choice between skiing and applying for a job. I got on the mountain just as the lifts opened at 8:30am. This was my first powder day at Breck. I wasn't really sure what part of the mountain to ski first. I started out skiing Mach 1 and Tiger off the south side of peak 8 a couple of times. The powder was knee deep in sections, but there were still rocks underneath. I then skied Inferno under chair E. The icy moguls that had been there a day earlier were still there, but they were covered in powder so you couldn't see where they were. I bit it a couple of times on that run, and it was pretty crappy. The best snow of the day was found on Peak 10 on Mustang, Trinity and The Burn. Since it was the middle of the holiday week and the slopes were very crowded, the new snow got tracked up pretty quickly. By noon, fresh powder was difficult to find. It was fun getting my first taste of Colorado powder. It does seem like it is lighter and drier than snow in California, although the difference is not dramatic.

Skiing on Rocks

Due to deteriorating snow conditions (It hasn't snowed a lot in the more than 2 weeks since I've been here) I have been skiing on my rock skis and having a blast. I've been finding some pretty good stashes of snow which can only be accessed by skiing through areas with sketchy coverage. The T-Bar opened yesterday which opens up a bunch of new terrain at the top of the mountain. Unfortunately there is not much snow yet. A storm is forcasted for tonight and tomorrow, so hopefully we will get dumped on. As I write this, it has yet to start snowing, but the forcast looks pretty certain so I am optimistic.

Can I get some more treble?

Last night I went to see Coolio perform live at Sherpa and Yeti's which is a local live music venue. When the first opening act came on, it was the beginning of a night of intense unintentional comedy. I swear the first two acts could have been part of an episode of the Chappelle show. (Note if you have not seen Chappelle's show, you will probably not get the jokes in this posting). The first rapper who went on stage was awful. His rhymes and delivery were pretty bad. I was just waiting for him to start rapping "Umm Pow Surprise". I guess that is why he was the opening act. The second group that came on was a local rap group from Boulder. Their act consisted of rapping original lyrics over beats from well known rap songs. I think "nuthin' but a g thang" was one of the songs. Needless to say, their lyrics were not as good as the originals. The best part of their act (very high UCR) was at the beginning when one of the guys said into the mic "Can I get some more treble?" to the sound guy. The best part was that he was serious. It was pretty funny. There were two more opening acts before Coolio that were decent. I don't remember any of the group names. Around 12:30am when the last opening act was finishing up it became clear that Coolio had not yet arrived. The next half and hour was basically the promoters stalling until he did arrive. First the DJ played some songs, and then all of the opening acts did some freestyling which was not of high quality. I think Coolio finally showed up just before 1am. His act was pretty good. He played all of the old school favorites and put on a good show. It was kind of strange seeing a rap star who was one of most famous rappers of the 90s playing for less than 100 people at a club in the middle of Colorado, although he didn't seem to mind. I guess that is what happens to musicians when they loose popularity and spend all of their money.

Me, my brother and my cousins Chris and Mark

Day in Denver

My parents flew home today. We all drove down to Denver and had lunch with my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins before they left. I hadn't seen my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins for almost 2 years so it was nice to see them. We had lunch at the The Perfect Landing at the Centennial Airport on the South side of Denver. It is a pretty cool restaurant that overlooks the runways so you can see the planes taking off and landing. To complete the unusual meat trifecta (see previous posts) I had a buffalo burger. It was tasty, although I have to say that I now know that I prefer beef over buffalo. The Centennial airport appears to be used almost exclusively by business jets and private aircraft. I got the impression that many of the people in the restaurant and the airport were very wealthy. There were quite a few trophy wives wandering around. Some of these trophies were very impressive, if you know what I mean. After dropping my parents off at the airport I headed back to Breckenridge. The drive is actually pretty quick (about an hour and half) when traffic is light.