Back from a great Father-Son trip to Colorado

I am back in Tally after an awesome Father-Son trip to Breckenridge, Colorado! It was not the longest trip, but dad and I sure know how to pack a lot of fun into a long weekend. We actually had a few convos about the awesome long weekend trips that we have had in the past. We can cover some ground!

So this might be some repeat to anyone that saw my mobile uploads to facebook, but oh well. Things will be a little more in context here so that will be the added benefit. :-) I am also using the standard "insert image" that livejournal provides to put these pics in here. It makes for fairly small resolution pics, but for most of these I think that gets the point across, and anyone can always click on the pictures if they want to see an enlarged version. I think all of them were taken with my phone so it isn't like they were super awesome to begin with.

The first pic is on the way from the airport out to the mountains. The last couple of times we have been out there, there has been tons of snow and the roads have been pretty crappy. We were definitely happy to be greeted by some warmer weather and clear roads, though it definitely made it feel a little less like we were starting out a ski trip.

As has been the case the last two trips out to Colorado, we have gotten snow every day. Now that may sound awesome (who doesn't like fresh powder?), it can actually get a little annoying sometimes. Not only is it colder having snow constantly hitting any exposed surface on your body, but to snow you need clouds. This means it is very overcast, which means you will have very flat light, which means it will be hard to see the surface of the snow. It can be good practice to learn to ski or board more by feeling with your feet that actually seeing the snow, but it sure is nice to have a sunny ski day every once in a while! You can see some of the aftermath of boarding in a snowstorm in the accompanying picture. Dad got a pretty good covering too as you can see.

Both days we got snow, but the second day it was definitely the harder snowing day of the two. We (luckily) got out pretty early both days so we got tons of good runs in before the crowds got out and before the weather got worse. You can see in the picture that the snow is really coming down. It never let up! We did see a little sun after we got off the mountain (of course!) on our last day. The snow was still awesome though and we definitely made the most of it and had a frickin' blast! One random note I just thought of... the riding was made a little more interesting for me by the fact that the toe strap on my right binding fell off at some point. Luckily, my left foot is my control foot, but it is definitely a bit of an odd feeling to be riding with only one strap on your binding! Nothing will take your mind off it like a nice beer sampler from the local brewery though!
It was definitely a kick ass trip, but it started getting kinda crazy cold towards the end. At one point I was walking around taking pics and I stopped to prop my camera on a railing for a long shutter shot. The railing ended up being so cold that when my hands touched it, it literally felt like someone had lighters under my hand because it just started burning. It was nuts! I believe one of the last times I checked weather.com before I went to bed, it said it was -4 feels like -15. That's chilly!

You may not be able to read it in the picture, but the car's thermometer was reading -5 when we were leaving in the morning. Not quite Tallahassee weather! There was a little snow on the road from the recent storm, but after the last couple of trips it pretty much seemed like nothing. We DID get to see the buffalo herd chilling next to the road on the way in. We've always seen the signs, but rarely see any actual buffalo. Dad and I had the same flight to Atlanta, then his flight home headed out about an hour earlier than mine so I had a little downtime in the airport. Had a little interesting and cool experience while I was there.
I went to the ice cream vending machine to get a snack. It said 50 cents had already been put in so I was kinda pumped. Then I realized why that was the case. I put in 50 more cents, then tried to put in a dollar and realized the dollar accepter was nonfunctional. Bummer. So I push the cancel and return change buttons a couple times and it seems like nothing happens. I'm about to walk away when I hear it drop change, but it definitely doesn't sound like 4 quarters. So I check and it is a snazzy new one dollar coin! The pic below isn't the greatest, but it was still a pretty snazzy find. This week has been good so far too. Got my shoulder checked out and bloodwork done (good to check) on monday, did PT for my calf and found out I need to lower my triglycerides a little bit today, and have fit a little research in there as well. Yesterday MC and I decided to join a local group who is training for the 10k at the end of the month and we had a nice 4.5 mile run without stopping! That is by far the longest MC has ever run nonstop and I was pretty stoked I didn't die considering how little I've been running lately. It was a cool little accomplishment. Tomorrow I have lots of chores to take care of and such and it should be a pretty busy day! Oh, and I couldn't fit them into the post well, but I'm including a few other "bonus" pics below of the drive out of Breckenridge :-) and as a side note, I'm just looking at my actual blog when I am figuring out where to align all these pics, so if it looks like crap on your feed, you might wanna check out my original post to see what I had in mind. ;-)