Up to 24.3.10

The Boss’s Husband plus nephew turned up eventually after a problem on the Interstate between Vail and Denver with an overturned truck necessitated a ninety-mile detour. It is when things like this happen that you understand how important building the Interstate Highway was. They seem pleasant and are here to do a whole lot of remodelling of kitchens in both Chalets, replacing carpet with wooden flooring etc so will be here for a couple of weeks before going over to Breckenridge to look after the guests who are booked in there for the Easter week, the hosts from there having gone home early as we will be doing.
After cleaning all day, we went out for a meal at the Blue Plate Bistro and had an excellent meal, paid for by the Management, making it even sweeter.
Packing to go home was strange as we have been doing things ‘for the last time’ for some days now eg feeding guests, cleaning bathrooms, filling up the birdfeeder (fortunately the nephew will take over this duty), and the time had really come.
All week it has been beautifully clear with blue skies and on Thursday night it started to snow. It snowed and snowed and by Friday morning at 7.00 when we set off for the airport, it was about 10” deep and still snowing. The slopes will be beautiful but as far as we were concerned it could be a nuisance if the flights were screwed up. We got to the Airport at Eagle which is a tiny, very cosy local one and were relieved to find that we were being boarded as per normal. Then we sat, waiting for the tarmac to be hoovered or whatever they do, continued to sit as the visibility didn’t improve, taxied over to the de-icing plant to be sprayed with orange and green liquid, sat some more, waited for the visibility to improve, taxied back to the terminal and disembarked. Four hours later the cycle was repeated taxiing hither and thither, being de-iced, then allelujah took off for New York and JFK airport. We were scheduled to catch the 7.20pm flight to Heathrow after a four hour wait so we weren’t too fazed at being held up, but as it turned out we missed that one so now pinned our hopes on getting across the terminal to check in on the last flight out at 10.30 pm. Of course my concern was that, although we could walk across and get on the plane OK, would our luggage be as swift? I had visions of turning up at Heathrow with our luggage still somewhere in JFK, but I’m impressed to say that it was with us on the plane. Thank you American Airlines. Much relief at the Heathrow luggage carousel as you can imagine. We had been in touch with a friend who was going to meet us and we started looking for him just as he started looking for us which was great as the alternative involved taxi to Paddington, train to Worcester, and a taxi home. As it was we stopped for a mega-breakfast at a Little Chef (perhaps surprisingly I would thoroughly recommend this), and were delivered to our door. Thanks Andrew – you’re a star!
Then it was the usual wading through a two foot pile of mail principally comprising begging letters from the bank, invitations to install double-glazing, to take up an American Express card etc etc, but with one bright spot with a letter from the Inland Revenue and a tax refund cheque for £175!
We had had a couple of hours sleep on the plane so were trying to stay awake until the evening to readjust to UK time and it seemed to work. After a lie-in on Sunday we were about sorted re jet-lag which was a relief.
The cats were pleased to see us after the statutory period of ignoring us for leaving them, and then wouldn’t let us out of their sight. It’s nice to be loved!
One of the first jobs was to start the Aga which had foiled the heating engineer in December so dramatically when the kids were trying to cook a Christmas meal. It turned out that the reason the oil wasn’t flowing was that a rather hard-to-see valve had tripped so all was well and we had a warm house again.
Next job was to take down all the Christmas decorations. It is a good job we have an eco-friendly plastic tree or the floor would have been knee deep in needles. As it was the holly sprigs started the fire and gave a jolly crackling start to proceedings.
We then had a succession of catching-up-with-friends-and-relations outings and meals, meeting George (Sue’s new nephew), meeting our new Grandperson (AKA - the bump), shopping to restock the larder and getting the car to start.
One of our neighbours had kindly been starting it every so often so all it needed was a battery charge, tyre pumping and it was ready to go – not! We set off and it stopped half a mile later on the main road. I lifted the bonnet and fiddled with everything that looked fiddly and it started. Great – not. Then it stopped and wouldn’t start no matter how much fiddling I did. So it was a job for super mechanic Nigel and it was picked up and taken for professional fiddling while we took a bus to Worcester to sort out a glitch in the Mortgage payments which has stopped when we transferred the accounts to the Co-op before we left.
Sue went to the Doctor’s hoping to get a fast-track MRI scan on her shoulder and was told that it would be 6 – 8 weeks unless we paid the nice man £300 for a private one. We are looking at exercising patient choice and going to Swindon where the wait is only 2 weeks. All a bit frustrating and not what we hoped for at all.
Having just about got things sorted it is time to reflect on the last few months.
America in general and Colorado in particular was big, very big. The mountains were wonderful and everything you expect from mountains with snow, wonderful sunsets, deep blue sky (owing a lot to the altitude), breathtaking (literally) high passes, stunningly deep canyons, marvelous views and simply the best snow any of us had experienced anywhere.
The people we met were unfailingly courteous and polite, with smiles and cheerful greetings from all the pisteurs looking after the chairlifts, and ‘thank you for coming to our mountain’ being a typical closing comment. Such a difference from the French who regarded all skiers as a necessary evil placed between them and their pay cheque. The system of queuing was typical with the American model forming up into groups of four in readiness for the chair and where a single skier, noticing a three-group and giving a polite ‘excuse me, are you a three – can I join you’ was always greeted with ‘sure, where are you from?’ Again so different from the French queuing ethos, which was every man (and woman) for him(or her)self, elbows out and to hell with anyone else.
The houses and towns were strange as they were inevitably wood-clad with felt strips for roofing as opposed to tiles or slates, and brick buildings were revered as curiosities. It was difficult not to be patronizing with regard to the age of the towns when we are used to having buildings reflecting hundreds of years of development and local history, but the feeling was that history had happened very quickly with lots and lots of events having taken place in a very short period of time. We were fascinated by the towns that had started as tents during the gold rushes of the 18th century, grown, crashed when the gold ran out, boomed again when silver was discovered, crashed again when that ran out, and usually bloomed to a lesser degree with other industries such as skiing or tourism or when other minerals such as gypsum or molybdomen were discovered. It was interesting that with the current rise in gold prices, some of the old workings are once again being sifted through, especially the tailings, and the tourist mines are now going back to commercial production.
We were disappointed not to find evidence of the Native Americans anywhere in the mainstream of American culture, it was as though they had been airbrushed out and sidelined to such an extent that it was all but invisible. Perhaps this is from a sense of guilt at their earlier treatment, but it did seem a missed opportunity to embrace a readymade, and incredibly rich, cultural heritage extending for thousands of years, which is what the Americans (white) generally seem to realize they lack. We could also see a developing underclass of Hispanic speakers who did the menial tasks that enabled the rich white condo owners to continue in the style to which they were accustomed.
The guests we looked after yielded the usual mix of delightful and tedious, with those we will definitely keep in touch with and those we won’t, while the Boss was a pleasure to work for, having given us the measure of autonomy and respect with which we felt comfortable.
Will we go back to Colorado? – definitely, there was so much to see that we were unable to get to and as far as skiing was concerned - it was sublime. And that was in a year (El Niño), when the locals were bemoaning the lack of snow!
It’s back to the humdrum of life, with a wet spring in the offing and the need to find gainful employment to support the revamping of bathroom and kitchen that WILL happen this year!
I leave you, gentle reader, with three of my favourite pictures of the trip; a view from the top of the mountain, a shot of the Hanging Lake and a wonderful walk we did on the mountain opposite Vail.
Adieu!

Up to 17.3.10

A snowy day with poor visibility but perfect skiing with foot-deep powder on untracked slopes was Hannah & Guy’s introduction to the Back Bowls of Vail. We took them around a lovely route and waited at Belle’s Cabin while they shot off and did several runs while we cooked the home-made burgers we (I) had carried in the rucksack. Belle’s is at the top of the mountain and has two large barbeques for skiers to cook whatever they like. There were several major meals going on and the group of lads just next to us included Guy and Hannah with beers and general bonhomie which typified the generosity shown to strangers here. The sun broke through for just a few minutes to give a hint of the views available but proper vistas, of the gob-smacking variety, were withheld for another day. Both said that the snow was the best ever which was no surprise.
We delivered them over to Vail again the next day and we went for a lovely walk into the hills opposite the ski slopes, where we met a nice selection of people with dogs, bikes etc. including a passing caterpillar-tracked two-man vehicle clanking its way steadfastly to the top, presumably to service the radio mast there. Lovely views were our gift as it was a blue sky day to dream of.
Hannah and Guy had the best day’s skiing ever with more fresh powder snow and perfect cloudless skies.
In the evening we sampled the delights of Australian cooking with an American twist. The onion in the photograph was prepared with longitudinal cuts then soaked in water to allow the flesh to swell into a chrysanthemum shape. This was then battered and deep fried and served with a spicy dip. Delicious. Excellent food, lovely salads and tasty margaritas made for a most enjoyable evening.
We had almost resigned ourselves to missing out on the Glenwood Springs trip because of the problems with the road as previously described, when we heard that one lane had been opened after the engineers had decided to blow up the hanging rock and clear it all up together.
We also heard that as there are no further bookings, we will definitely be going home early and the Boss has changed the flights to Friday 19th March, leaving from Eagle Airport at 8.50am, (not such a bad time) to arrive back in UK at 6.30 on Saturday morning.
The long hard boring two weeks finally came to an end and we waved goodbye (and good riddance), to our last lot of guests. It’s odd how with some people there is an instant bond, you feel that you will certainly want to keep in touch, and with others you wouldn’t really lose any sleep if you never met them again. What is really odd is that you can tell which it will be within ten minutes of meeting them!
Anyway, as soon as they had gone we jumped into Old Faithful and headed off to Breckenridge to go Skiddooing. We met the hosts from the Breckenridge Lodge Hazel and Pam, and after getting kitted out with big soft warm boots and optional one-piece suits, we set off with in a pack of 10 in brand-new skidoos worth $5000 each. It wasn’t too expensive at $100 per driver and $50 per passenger for a two hour guided thrash through the forests and along some old gold-mining trails and up to the top of a saddle which was on the Continental Divide. I have been meaning to explain what this was but have forgotten so far so this is a good opportunity. The Continental Divide is the place at which the water and snow-melt from one side drains to the Atlantic and the water and snowmelt from the other side drains to the Pacific. It forms a ragged line from Canada in the North, passing down through Colorado, to Mexico in the South
It was great fun dashing along the tracks as we were necessarily following the guide and he was going at around 30 mph all the time. Guy managed to tip his up on the first corner with Sue on board as passenger, but was the only tipper and with no-one hurt, all was well (although he was reminded of the incident throughout the day and evening).
As we were intending to ski the next day at Breckenridge with Hazel and Pam, we came prepared to stay the night so were able to have a meal at the famous Bubba Gump’s Eatery. Formulated as a homage to the Forrest Gump film, the building is filled with memorabilia from the film with several genuine costumes, calipers, and lots of the famous sayings that came from the film, etc to add atmosphere. It was packed and so it was a good job we had pre-booked. For those who have forgotten the Bubba connection, he was a shrimp fisherman prior to the draft, who could recite hundreds of ways of cooking and preparing shrimps for eating, and frequently did, with only Forrest patient (or slow-witted enough) to not interrupt him. After Bubba was killed and Forrest survived Vietnam as a hero, he bought a shrimping boat and together with his old Captain (ex-legs), started shrimp fishing and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and made his first fortune. To say that Shrimp was a principle item on the menu is to misunderstand: it was the only item on the menu, but served in hundreds of different ways. Boiled shrimp, coconut shrimp, cheese shrimp, chili shrimp, shrimp on a stick, shrimp inna sauce, shrimp inna bun, shrimp inna salad, little shrimps, big shrimps, huge shrimps ….. you get the picture. I had a Shrimp Heaven which comprised shrimp (surprisingly) prepared in four different ways with three different dipping sauces and was absolutely delicious although rather filling. They must get through tons of Shrimps every night and there was definitely a shrimpy atmosphere when you walked into the place while outside was the bench from the film where Forrest had sat and recounted his tale. A real experience although not one for non-shrimpists.
I can see this developing as an in-car game. Some one starts off with Chili shrimp and each subsequent player has to name another shrimp dish without repeating an earlier one. Hours of fun!
Earlier in the evening we had been treated to the lovely spectacle of Pam’s ‘almost pet’ fox. She has been putting chicken scraps out for a while now, for a visiting fox that turns up each night at 6 o’clock as part of his rounds. Tonight it was chicken hearts (a special treat) and sure enough he was there. We watched him from about 10 feet as he came onto the porch and picked up a mouthful, then retired to eat it, then returned for another mouthful. He wasn’t fazed by flashes from cameras and as you can see, he is a really handsome and fit specimen.
The next morning we were a bit disappointed to see that it was snowing hard and windy with it, meaning the visibility would be dreadful up the mountain. We decided to fall back on plan B, so after a luxurious breakfast with Pam and Hazel we bid farewell and zoomed off down towards The Hanging Lake and Glenwood Springs.
Having called into Avon for the right gear, we made our way to the Lake walk which had gone slushy since we were last there but was still pretty tricky towards the top and required a team effort to negotiate safely. The lake was as lovely as before although the huge icicle beneath the spouting rock, that had been about 12 feet high, had melted back and now only showed a ring of ice a couple of feet high rather like a volcanic caldera. Guy and Hannah managed to fool around in the snow on the way down and we all had a good time with no serious injuries. As an aside, I felt, probably for the first time ever, like an old man trying to do something I shouldn’t be doing. This came as a bit of a shock as I have always rather prided myself on being able to cope with most physical challenges and yet here I was, placing each foot as carefully as you do knowing that if you slip, once, you could be in plaster for 6 months, or at the least unable to walk more than a mile without painkillers. And all the time Guy and Hannah were gambolling down the path like a pair of idiots, jumping blindly into the deep drifts of snow on the path sides with me dreading them accidentally falling into me and causing me to slip. Hey ho …. tempus fugit but as T.E.Lawrence said ‘my citadel of invincibility was irrevocably destroyed’.
We got down and after admiring the holes in the road made by the rock fall, went past a group of large mammals called Big Horn Sheep whose defining characteristics were: they were sheep and they had big horns. We arrived at Glenwood Springs where we luxuriated in the hot pools for a muscle-loosening hour or so. Then it was over the footbridge and into Juicy Lucy’s where we had had a snack before on a previous visit but on recommending it to some guests, been told that the steak was simply the best that they had ever had.
A variety of steaks later, each perfectly prepared, and not overly expensive and we set off for the drive back after a full and active day, including the loss of an hour as America went into Spring mode time-wise.
There were also lots of oohs and aahs as Sue was given Mother’s Day cards brought out by Hannah and Guy (these not forgotten). They each reflected the child and their relationship with Sue and were individually and collectively very touching and managed to be thankful for past efforts while reflecting the humour of the giver, while not being sickly sentimental. Excellent, all and very proud-making.
It would seem that our sensible and fair suggestions (well we thought so), have been well-received by the Boss so far, so wages and bonuses may yet meet our expectations.
On our penultimate day with the kids we went off to Georgetown for the day to see the sights, explore one of the most revered towns, and to chat to a gold miner who is currently running the Steam Railway that loops up the valley to Silver Plume, a few miles up the valley. This was the cunning answer to the problem of a 6% gradient that the railway couldn’t go up. By making a loop and crossing back over on itself, the distance was doubled and the gradient reduced to a manageable 3%. This was to be the link with the newly opened silver mines of Leadville but unfortunately, by the time they had worked this out and built the Railway Loop and necessary bridges, another company had
arrived at Leadville from a different direction so the route from Georgetown was never completed. It languished until 1939 when it was all pulled down then in 1973 the bridges were rebuilt and the track relayed and a glorious sample of steam railwayhood is now available during the summer months and attracts steam nuts from across the globe.
The town was famous for its gold, discovered on the one side of the valley when the miners had to contend with loads of black muck blocking up their filters. The discovery, after the gold had run out, and on the other side of the valley, that the black muck contained Silver led to a new boom. The Phoenix Silver Mine is still operational and gold is still found in them thar hills.
We took Hannah and Guy to Denver for their flights and waved them goodbye. It has been lovely seeing them, Skype is no substitute for the real thing.
We called in to The Rocky Mountain Quilting Museum in Golden on the way back and were astounded at the intricacies, imagination, and craftsmanship found in the several dozen quilts on exhibition. In this instance all were created by male quilters but the stock of quilts is the largest in the State and well worth a visit.
Back home now and awaiting the arrival of the Boss’s Husband with a final day’s cleaning and packing ahead tomorrow before an early start home on Friday. Final thoughts on the trip next week I think.

The big news this week came by way of Sue’s birthday on 7th. Hannah and Guy flew out and we went to Denver to pick them up. It’s a bit of a trip with Denver 120 miles away and the airport a further 22 miles out of town and I was a little concerned that Old Faithful (a 1991 Ford Explorer) might get cold feet half-way there – or back. But all was well and we got back at 12.00 midnight.
It’s a shame that it was dark because they missed a lovely drive through some beautiful countryside that includes two mountain passes at over 10,500 feet, deep canyons, a mile long tunnel and a view over the mid-west plains that goes all the way to New York I should think. Imagine Norfolk times a thousand. Never mind, they will see it when they get their return flight which leaves during the day.
Denver is proud of being known as the mile high city and it boasts some fine modern buildings in the downtown bit as well as an enormous urban sprawl and a historic old town bit. It was from here that the pioneers first saw the mountains they were going to take three months to cross, or to go to the Gold-or-Silver-rush towns.
En route we went through, or at least over, Georgetown that apart from being a historical Gold-rush town, also has a 50 mile loop of working narrow-gauge steam railway that is part of the network of railways that laced through the mountains connecting the smaller towns and carried people, supplies and gold / silver. It also has the first bank to be robbed by Butch Cassidy who had his Hole in the Wall hideout in a box canyon not far away.
It was lovely to see them both and we spent our first day out on Sunday giving them the guided tour of the area ending up in a Thrift Shop in Minturn. Unlike the one in Edwards, the clothes here are dated on the price ticket and if they have been in for more than 30 days there is a 30% reduction and if for more than 60 days, a 50% reduction. The sale price is split between the previous owner and the shop rather than being donated as with the Edwards one. Hannah and Guy were amazed at the quality of the clothes, with designer labels abounding. Tempting though the fur bodywarmers, cowboy boots and one-piece ski suits were, they managed to buy only a pair of ski / boarder trouser each.
Back to the big news.
Guy had been given a birthday card and a Mother’s Day card for Sue from Natasha to bring out with him and he forgot one so when Natasha Skyped Sue on her birthday to see if she had received it, she hadn’t. Natasha was quite annoyed and it turned out that it was because enclosed in the card was a copy of a fourteen week scan showing Pace-Bardon junior! This is great news and we were all very excited at becoming Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles. It (specific variety as yet unknown) is due in September so it seems that the honeymoon Caribbean Cruise was a success. All very exciting and we look forward to seeing the original in due course.
It snowed overnight on Sunday for the new arrivals so we all went out skiing on Monday and although the visibility wasn’t terribly good as it was continuing to snow, it was wonderful skiing with about 6” of powder on top of the snow base pack. Today (Tuesday), they all went out again and I was left home alone to clean the hot tub, make bread, take the rubbish to the recycling site etc.etc. Actually I find that skiing on consecutive days is a bit too much for my poor knees at the moment and we are aiming to go to Vail on Thursday to explore the Back Bowls and I want to be as fit as possible for that.
One of the trips we were hoping to take with them was to go down to Glenwood Springs via the Hanging Lake and have a soak in the lido again. As I have mentioned before there is a wonderful 13 mile, very deep, sheer-sided canyon before Glenwood and is seems that last Sunday some rocks fell onto the Interstate carriageway. When I say rocks, I mean that one was the size of a car and punched its way straight through the top, Eastbound, carriageway and landed on the lower Westbound carriageway! Fortunately it happened at night and no-one was underneath but it may take a week to repair the hole and clear off the rocks. There is also another similar-sized rock poised to come down and the highway men are considering dropping that one in a controlled explosion rather than wait for a spring thaw to fire it down. The diversion is about 180 miles which gives some idea of the importance of this road. We might still go and just take the diversion because the scenery where it goes is supposed to be magnificent as well and the Police lady who I talked to, to get an update on the situation, said to make sure we travel in the daylight because it goes through some very wild areas with lots of wildlife to be spotted including bald-headed eagles.
With the last lot of guests leaving last Saturday, we now have four guests as well as Hannah and Guy, and when they leave on Saturday 13th and 17th respectively, the order book is empty with no more guests scheduled in at all. This means that we may well be coming back much earlier than planned which will be a very good job as far as Sue’s shoulder is concerned because it means that any operation that may be needed on her shoulder, will be carried out within the time-span required. Sadly it also means we won’t get to go touring for a month but Sue’s shoulder is clearly more important and we will have an excuse to return to Colorado. Negotiations regarding wages for the non-worked, contracted month are beginning.
The weather has been really quite mild down at the bottom of the mountain even though it has been snowing well and sticking at the top. We have seen more and more grass appearing and in places it’s starting to turn green although the man in the Bank assured us that there is still a real possibility of serious snowfalls in March and April. I am half expecting crocuses to show up although I don’t know if they are here or not.
One effect has been that our feathered friends have stopped coming to our feeding station which is a shame because they provided lots of interest while washing up. I suppose they can find other more natural sources of food as the snow melts, but it does turn on its head a well-known saying as in this case they are definitely foul-weather friends.
A strange tale now, which is typical of both the place and the time. In 1891 a man who had been elected Sheriff of Red Cliff called Arthur Fulford, set off 11.30 pm on 31st December into a snowstorm up a mountain called Slate Mountain. His brother was unable to go with him but became worried when he didn’t return the next morning and went to find him. Unfortunately his tracks led to a sheer edge and he was unable to find his brother until the spring when his body was found at the bottom of a snow and rock fall. As a fine upstanding citizen, he was buried at Red Cliff and was much missed.
The reason he was out at night in a snow-storm was based in a story that started off 30 years earlier.
Then, a group of friends set out from Denver towards California when they discovered ‘coloured’ rock ie rock that indicated the presence of gold. Eight of the group decided to stay and explore while the rest carried on to California. The eight discovered the gold vein and eventually accumulated a large quantity of gold nuggets that they hid in the mine shaft. As they were running out of provisions coming up to winter, they sent Buck Rogers off to get some more, which was a 7 day trip away. Unfortunately while he was away, it snowed and he was unable to get back to them. Never mind, he went to the bar and waited. Unfortunately it snowed for a long time and by the time it cleared up he had spent the gold he had brought with him for provisions. He returned to the mine but found that there had been a rock-slide and the mine was obliterated as were his compatriots, of which there was no sign. Overcome with remorse, he drifted around and eventually died in Denver in 1881 after telling a Doctor all his problems (and where the mine was). In 1891, Arthur and his brother was running a “Halfway House’ Hotel between Eagle and Nolan Creek (a gold rush mine area), and frequently rented horses to prospective prospectors. He became friendly with one old prospector who said he had a map to a gold mine where he had found bones, tools, and gold nuggets. They formed a partnership whereby they would go and clear the gold nuggets from the mine in the summer. Unfortunately, two weeks later, the prospector was killed in a fight in the Saloon at Red Cliff, and after going through his Hotel room, Arthur came across the map of where the mine entrance was. He eventually found the site after searching for several years, and was going to hammer in the corner site pegs as required by law which stated that if a mine was not worked for a year, it could be re-assigned, to a new owner, by registering it on a first come first served basis, on 1st January of each year.
This then, was why it was so important that he was going off, late at night, with pegs in his backpack and into a snow-storm.
What a story – and it’s true!
Incidentally the mine-shaft has never been discovered although a detailed description written down by the Doctor in 1881 and generally made known in a pamphlet called Timberline to Goldmine is freely available.

Up to 3.3.10

We spotted this seat on a visit to Minturn where we had had a lovely breakfast on our way to Vail. It's nice to see that old boards are still useful.
With the melt / freeze following the snow we have had recently, a curious and rather beautiful effect has materialised on the fir trees. As the snow melts, it drip from the branches then as the temperature drops again in the afternoon, it freezes, forming long delicate icicles. It is obviously what the designers of plastic icicles for Christmas trees were basing their design on, but I had no idea that the origianl were so lovely.
On our day off, we went over to Breckenridge which is about 40 miles away and is where The Boss has a second Chalet. The hostesses, we met a while ago when they came over for a day’s skiing in Vail, and we were going over to see them and to go skiing with a friend of ours from Whitbourne that I was at School with. The town of Breckenridge is a really old place having been established in 1859 (I have seen British Rail sandwiches that old), and is full of charming Victorian Houses making up the High Street. All lit up at night it adds a mystical quality, and it is known as a historical gem of a Town. We met up with our co-hostesses and the friends, and set off skiing. It was snowing all day and we were guided around the slopes in a fairly cautious manner because the visibility was pretty bad. At one point we split up into a hardcore downthelumpybits party and a idontwanttofalloversoletstakeitsteady group. Going down, we lost Sue and for a longish while (about half an hour), I was waiting half way down a run and wondering if she was going to walk down ( it was a flat joining / poling bit that was hard with her hurting shoulder) or if she had fallen and was injured so she couldn’t walk down. Eventually a text! That she was in one piece and down at the bottom of a run having been helped out of a soft snow pile by the second group whom we thought were in front of us. All’s well that ends well but for a moment I really wished we had had these short wave radio thingies to communicate with.
The skiing was difficult to assess because we stayed low and the visibility was so bad we didn’t really anything very testing, but it did seem ideal for the beginner with a steep bit at the top of the run with a flattening out down towards the bottom and a rather tame last bit to the lift.
A meal at Fatty’s in the evening was ace, with the coach for the USA Men’s Freestyle Board Team turning up in the middle of the evening to a round of applause and cheering. Slightly ironic because he was on crutches as he had broken his leg the previous evening in a run down the course after the competition.
All the waitresses wore Gold-coloured medals in honour of the USA team and our hostesses begged two as souvenirs. Plenty of patriotism here.
All in all an eventful day and we wended our way home and it started to snow as we climbed up to the Vail Pass.
It has snowed off and on most of last week and added about 20 inches on the mountain which makes for lovely skiing. On our next day off we opted for a free guided tour starting from a yurt at the top of Vail, and were joined by two of our guests. I managed to get down one particular run that has been the location of my last two crashes, one self-managed and the other a blind T-bone, so hopefully laying a ghost and the skiing was lovely as we dipped and dived between the trees. The guide gave us some local history including the fact that the Two Elk Lodge ( a huge mountain-top restaurant), had been burned to the ground by an arsonist eco-warrior who didn’t want the back bowls to be opened up for skiing. She also knew her birds and identified my mysterious red-throated and capped finch as a Rose Finch who was a laggard who should have gone south for the winter but had stayed behind as they sometimes did, for our benefit. The local bird at the top of the mountain is the Canadian Jay, also know as the Camprobber because of it’s habit of stealing food from the hands of the customers. It is a pretty drab sort of bird colourwise, but you can’t have everything and the views it had were glorious.
We had another lost companion situation and eventually linked back up an hour later after we had circled back round the route we had taken to check down tree holes. During the meeting up, we hung back so we wouldn’t get caught in any flare-up as the two stories were exchanged and blame was apportioned (differently in each case - surprisingly!). She didn’t carry her phone because there was no need as her partner carried his (!) and the ever-so-useful pair of two-way radios were in no danger of getting lost as they were sitting on the bedside table in their bedroom because it was hard to remember how to use them because they were never taken out.
Anyway the rest of the day, while a little tense, went off OK so that’s all right.
Our new set of guests has arrived and they could be our last as we have a blank book after the 12th March. This has all sorts of permutations as our employment could be curtailed early, which in turn has implications for when we fly back because we can’t afford to travel for two months and of course we will be a month’s wages short. We will discuss with the boss but who knows, we might be back by the end of March.
It would seem that the new guests were expecting to be located actually in the village of Beaver Creek instead of in Avon and were chuntering a bit about the inconvenience. In fact they had booked through an agent who hadn’t given them the full information. Mind you they were also chuntering about the lack of power in the hot tub jets, the fact that it was icy outside and they were concerned for their health, and worst of all, that the beds squeaked! This could be a long two weeks!
On one of our shopping trips, I was trying to top up my stock of painkillers and was told by the Pharmacist that I couldn’t get Paracemamol as it wasn’t licensed in America but that Tylenol (active ingredient Acetaminophen) would do the trick. With a little research, because I didn’t understand, I discovered that the full scientific name of Acetaminophen was Para-acetylyaminophenol and the scientific name for Paracetamol was – Para-acetylyaminophenol and the only difference lies in the selection of the letters from the scientific name for the generic name ie. Para-acetylyaminophenol or Para-acetylyaminophenol - amazing!
Our quilting guest went for a second meeting of the 7th Day Pencecostal Quilters and was narrowly saved from being saved but once again resisted although had to endure a second wave of persuasion via an Evangelizing Rant on the radio in the car on her way home.
The ex-RAF guest has a rich store of bon mots and one evening offered the following – She was only the telegraphist’s daughter, but she certainly knew how her Da-Da Didit. Ho ho!
We will be sorry to see our current lot of guests go, they have been appreciative of our efforts to make their stay a memorable one and are good company, but all good things come to an end, whether guests or ski hosting.