Landed about 9pm Thursday, grabbed a Ford Freestyle and headed up to Winter Park. Kind of crazy fog banks and snow storm heading up Berthoud Pass. After seeing it in the daytime, the consequences are definitely high if you run off the road. Good thing the Freestyle kept it between the posts.
Friday we rode with the Peter Glenn crew and the conditions were mid winter-ish. About 6 or 7 inches of fresh kept it interesting, even in the flat Colorado trees. I still have to stick with my theory that Colorado has a great marketing scam going, because the terrain is as flat as WNY. Unbelievable. There were some great tree runs though, I will give the place that.
Saturday the temps headed up into the 40's and spring was in action. The mountain was super fun, even though they plow the hell out of everything. Would'nt want some Texan spraining an ankle on a bump on the side of the trail. Flinn and I did find a good "office guy" park that we sessioned a bit. I headed out about 230 and caught my flight back to Orange County.
Winter Park was recently acquired by Intrawest. Shortly thereafter they built one of their trademark "villages", which, by and large, consist of about 12 or 13 of these condo monstrosities. How does someone look at this and think it is a nice, quaint, idea of a ski "village". It looks like something that they would build in the middle of Manhattan. Where have all of the good areas gone? The same way every highway exit has the same group of Home Depot's, Applebee's, and Wal Mart's, ski resorts have these. At least some (the Mansfield side of Stowe, Jackson Hole, Brighton, to name a few) areas have kept their identities.
Ah, Half and Half. It has been a solid year since I had one of these. I used to kill a minimum of two a day in Vermont. So good.
On the way to Denver, I stopped at a roadside ice cream place (no good ones out here by the way) and got a shake. I wanted something unique so I ordered up a Cinnamon shake. The bearded hippie making the concoction put in a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and the requisite splash of milk. Just before I opened my mouth to tell him I did'nt order Vanilla, he threw in (you might want to sit down) two Atomic Fireballs, some cinnamon candies, and some Cinnamon Bears. Now that's how you make a Cinnamon shake. Man that was good.
