Another weekend of snowboarding and hanging out with my friends has come and gone. This time, me, Sean, and Dave met up in the mountainous region of North America we like to call Colorado!
For the full gallery of photos, click on this thumbnail of Sean, RAGING, getting big air dude!
Wednesday night, St. Patrick’s Day:
We landed at the airport at about 7PM, hung out while we all gathered and had some drinks, and then we went to the Celtic Tavern and met up with Amy, Laura, Mark, and his girlfriend. I forgot her name. Drats. We ended up staying there for quite a while and then made our way to a nasty hotel called The American Inn or something like that. It was $19.95 and up. We paid the up, which was $40… not too bad, and that was $100 cheaper than staying in Silverthorne, so a plus.
Thursday:
We were supposed to get up nice and early and head towards one of the mountains to go snowboarding at. Well, let’s just say that by the time we hit the slopes at Breckenridge, it was 12:30PM. We did get to put in 3 1/2 hours of good riding in, but we were kind of beat up. We got plenty of sleep though! Zepy? Afterwards, we walked around downtown Breckenridge, which is always kind of cute. We got back to our hotel room where we decided that we’d nap until about 8:30. Well, we napped…oh yeah, we napped, until 11:30PM, where we quickly called down to the Old Chicago to see if they served food still. Yissiree, until midnight. We ran down there, got some pizza and a few brewskis!
Friday:
We decided that we all needed to go to Vail since we’ve never been there. I could be wrong, Dave or Sean may have been there, but I don’t think so. The place is HUUUUGE! GIGANTIC! It dwarfs every place I’ve ever been snowboarding at. Here, I’ve always wanted to keep this published, online. It’s my Excel file I like to call: “Ski Dot Ex Ell Ess”. By the way, we had expected a winter wonderland, but what we received was a fantastic weekend of awesome weather. It was in the mid to upper 50s in the mountains, making for a “mashed potato” snow experience, per The Senator. In Denver, it was in the high 70s to just at 80 degrees on both Friday and Saturday. Amazing weather. Back to Vail. We ended up having a few brewskis at one of Vail’s bar/restaurants that had outdoor seating. It was nice and warm at first, but after a few down the hatch and the hour hand rotating clockwise, the t-shirt wasn’t enough. We headed back towards our hotel and went down to the Old Chicago for something other than pizza (I got lasagna) and more brewskis. Amy was already there and we hung out for a few, teasing her about her boyfriend she made at the bar. I don’t recall how late we stayed out, as we had a big day of riding ahead of us.
Saturday:
We decided that we would hit Loveland because of its smaller stature, less popular among the tourists. We made the right decision. With temps in the 50s, the major mountains were PACKED, to say the least. Loveland was pretty busy its damn self, but nothing like what Vail or Breckenridge would be like on a day like this, in the middle of Spring Break. This picture shows a rare glimpse of the armored man, as he suits up, ready for battle. I gotta give it to the guy, he was taking some pretty brave jumps over rocks and the like. I was very impressed. We had an absolute blast at Loveland. It was our earliest start yet, about 10:30. We’d been cutting the start times down one hour each day. So on this day, we had a good 5 hours of riding with very little rest in between. We spent most of the day looking for jumps to take. I feel that I made some good improvements, but definitely need to spend many more days honing my skills!
Saturday Night:
We decided… damn, I keep saying that. Well, snowboarding wasn’t going to happen on Sunday. I think we were all beat up a bit and kind of looking forward to playing in Downtown Denver another night. So now, saving another $140 by not stayin in Silverthorne, we found a place in Denver, at the Embassy Suites. It was about 160 for the night, so, in the very end, we did BETTER on our overall hotel bill by a few decades! Very nice hotel/suite. It had 3 beds. One in the living room and two in the bedroom. It had an ample bathroom as well. We started the night by going out to eat at Rio Grande. We sucked down about 4-6 margaritas each…tasty tasty. We had our food, had some contact with Amy, who was partying at another one of her boyfriend’s houses…trying to coordinate her coming to Denver to play. After leaving Rio, we headed to the Purple Martini, which sounded like a happenin’ place… well, it was alright… I think we were pretty drunk by the time we got there, so it was hard to ascertain. Anyway, we stayed there all night, sucking down beers (me) and just chillin’. Amy and Laura showed up with one of their friends, and stayed for quite some time. We had a blast. In the meantime, before Amy ever showed up, Dave had to hit the high road to the room. He was pretty much cashed out. Sean and I were troopers, at least on the exterior. Let’s just say that later that night, I lost some weight, a few times… I felt like killing myself on Sunday.
Sunday:
Our last day. What to do? Heal. Heal. Heal. We went to an Irish place for breakfast/brunch. It was already about 1:30PM, WAAAAY later than we wanted it to be. The Irish place was right next to Coors Field, and we had an amazing view of the city and the field. I ordered Fire Tomato Bisque and Irish Oatmeal pancakes. Didn’t eat much of the cakes, but the Bisque was “good as hell” (as O.B.) would say! I really enjoyed our time there, but it was a bit chilly and we were all pretty hung over, me being the worst. We hung out there for a bit and tried to see Red Rocks Park but found out that we’d barely have time to do much there. Off to DIA (Denver International Airport) we go! We played there, ate at Wolfgang Puck’s, and thanked everyone for the DAMN GOOD TIME WE HAD TOGETHER!
US, TOO, DUDE!
