I’m back from trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Here are my thoughts on the trip:

There’s no earthly reason why someone as fat and out of shape as me should be skiing. I wasn’t sure whether my leg muscles or my heart would give out first. Since I was out of breath unloading my luggage, I was banking on my heart. It was too close to call.

The weather was awesome. A little warmer that I like, but very mild for January. It was between 35 and 50 F every day I was there. The snow could have better, but considering the temperatures it was pretty darn good.

The guys I go with on this trip are all snow boarders, while I’m a skier. Every year they try to convince me to try snow boarding, but I never do. There’s a kind of sub/counter-culture to snow boarding in which I just don’t fit. If you live in the US, it’s similar to the skateboarding culture. This year, they finally convinced me to give it a try. I rented a board the second day and went up the lift to see what I could do. One wrong turn later, and I was having my first snow boarding experience on a blue run (green=easiest, blue=intermediate, black=hardest). That was a bit much for the first run ever on a board. After over an hour of boarding and too many face plants to count, I headed for the ski school office and signed up for a lesson. I spent that afternoon in a lesson and the whole next day practicing what I’d learned. It was great. I will be boarding again on my next trip, but I’m not giving up skiing entirely – at least I don’t think I am.

One afternoon we went to the Tugboat Grill and Pub for apres ski boozing. They were having a band that night who described themselves as Hip-Hop and Acid Jazz. Yikes! The band, whose name I don’t recall, had all the traditional instruments of a rock band, plus a saxophone and a trombone. The first song was jazz and was very good. I don’t know what Acid Jazz is, but apparently it’s just jazz. The next song was jazz with two people rapping over the music. I don’t really know how to describe it. Take a Thelonius Monk recording and a Beastie Boys recording and try to sync them up. What’s that? They don’t sync? Yeah, neither did this band. It was just weird. My opinion aside, the crowd was going wild, so somebody must like that combination. I, however, didn’t stay long.

I have about 100 emails to read, a sea of comment spam to wade through, not to mention I should spend some time with my family. I’ll try to get a post off tomorrow in between loads of laundry. It looks like there was some good posts in my absence, so I’ll have some reading to do too.