A happy good time week

"Exclamation!" Schffwooooooph. Cheers and whistling. These were the sounds of my week. If I was ranking weeks, this one would go down in a best-of list. Not one thing in particular made it so, just an accumulation of happy good times. A happy good time week!

Tuesday dawned to 16 inches of fresh powder and blue skies. This was a new (and challenging) experience for our development ski team, but they battled courageously. Skiing on one leg in soft snow is tough. (Or so I've heard.) And skiing in a monoski in fresh snow means a constant stream of snow flowing into your lap and pounding into your face. Several face plants and cartwheels later they were all skiing the deep snow like demons...who ski.

Happy sunshine times at Vail Top: Michelle, Jono, Stu, Lincoln, Mark and Tori.

Wednesday delivered another 15 inches of fresh snow. Due to the fact that half of Colorado had called in sick the day before so they could go skiing, there were very few people who could make the most of the even newer snow, meaning even fewer people on the hill. A brief training session in the morning was followed by a massive afternoon exploring Vail's Back Bowls. Too. Much. Fun.

Obligatory cheesy chairlift shot. Note: My facial hair was more like facial icicles at this stage.

And what's a stellar week without some stellar live music to top it off? With steam billowing from his scalp like a chimney stack, Lyrics Born got the faux cobble stone streets of Vail heaving. Even the upper classes, viewing the show from their chateau windows were getting their funk on.

Prime viewing position, from the shoulders of a one legged man.

But it's only Sunday. By my calculations there is still one day left to bring me round to the end of this tip top week. Bring on Monday!

Timed to perfection

You know those moments where everything just seems to line up perfectly? After being inside all day you look outside to see a sunset that puts your wall paper to shame. When you’re outside in the sun and dirt, digging a hole thinking about how thirsty you are and someone brings you a glass of lemonade. When you’re rewinding a video and stop on the exact place you wanted.  I love those moments. Those moments make me feel like a superstar.

I had two of those moments on one day very recently. On Sunday afternoon I was driving our athletes to Denver so they could catch a flight to Europe early on Monday morning. It’s normally a two hour drive and we’d heard the weather was going to be bad. Being the conscientious we are we left a day early to stay a night in Denver and make sure we got to the airport in the morning with plenty of time. Four minutes from home in Avon we rounded a corner to witness a sea of glowing red lights. Hundreds of brake lights glowed and nothing moved. At that precise moment the announcer on the radio came on the air to let us know that there’d been an accident on the I-70 between Minturn and West Vail and the traffic was backed up like a parking lot. Def Leppard’s drummer couldn’t have had better timing. It was one of those moments.

The next one of those moments followed twenty minutes later. While we were playing eye spy and waiting for the traffic to clear we’d changed radio stations. As the traffic returned to full speed the new announcer came on the air to tell us that the I-70 was backed up because of an accident between Minturn and West Vail. It was another one of those moments…except an hour too late.

In the twenty minutes we were waiting for the accident to clear the bad weather had arrived and sent all the traffic on the I-70 into cardiac arrest. If we were going to be sitting in traffic for the next little while eye spy was not going to cut it. Perfect time to get some reading done. Unfortunately, Shantaram was so engrossing that I didn’t see the traffic moving again and lost several places in the jostle for pole position in the traffic jam. Clearly reading wasn’t going to work either. What do you do when your car isn’t fancy enough to have a DVD player? You improvise and put a laptop on the dash. That way I could watch a film and still watch the traffic at the same time. And everyone in the car could join in. Perfect! It made five hours driving feel like four!

Predictably, the next morning dawned bright and sunny with clear skies and roads. But those couple moments where everything lined up perfectly made it all worth it. Those moments are golden.

It's miiigghhty cold out 'ere

Pain: A basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leading to evasive action. (As defined by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. I'm led to believe it's a very reputable dictionary, primarily because it was at the top of the Google list).


I'm going to break down the last day of 2010 and the first few days of 2011 for you based on this definition.


Noxious stimulus: The cold. The oh so very cold. December 31 began with a peer out the window and the thought, "Oh, I thought today was going to be cold. It doesn't look that cold." I'm not sure what cold exactly looks like. I don't think I expected snowmen standing outside shaking their stick fists and frowning their coal eyes at me as a warning, but it didn't look that different to December 30. I learnt how wrong I was when I ventured out onto the balcony in boxer shorts and bare feet. My entire body recoiled in a move similar that of Cosmo Kramer's in any number of Seinfeld episodes. I quickly put pants and socks on and only moved outside when entirely necessary.


Naked nerve endings: January 1 dawned to an absolute amateur error. Fruit left on the front seat of the car that was intended for breakfast was frozen solid. If only I had a blender with me - frozen bananas make a wicked smoothie. This really has nothing to do with naked nerve endings, but I thought the naked bit might get you reading.


Physical discomfort: The next couple of days were not entirely pleasant. The mercury hovered anywhere between -20 degrees and -30 degrees celcius. I don't think I need to explain physical discomfort when I tell you it was my job to stand in the shade videoing racers skiing past. Although, I can't complain; the racers had to wear lycra.


Evasive action: Sharing the sliver of sunlight breaking through the trees with the other coaches. Short spints up hill. Windmilling arms. Granola bars.


January 3 was like heaven on earth. We woke to a balmy -10 degrees and the driest powder you could imagine. There's a silver lining to everything. So now if you hear me whinge or moan about how sore/painful/cold something is, just say to me, "Tom, remember those couple of days at the start of 2011?"