Melancholy in the Mountains

This year marks the 10 year anniversary of my working holiday in Colorado.  In fact, this month (March), exactly 10 years ago was when I finished up my “job” at the ski resort of Copper Mountain, and headed back home to the real world, to start a real job.

So it was fitting to be celebrating the anniversary with a day’s skiing at Copper Mountain on Tuesday.  We (Andy, myself, and my mom – whose schedule to the States overlapped with ours) left early that morning to make the 2 hour drive from Denver to the Mountains.  Our ride was a huge Ford 4×4 (or “truck” as the Yanks will say).  It was a stunning cloudless day, with evened-out snow on the ski slopes – a nice change from snowy Canada!  During the day, I relived the memories of when I was a bright-eyed bushy-tailed 22 year old working at the resort’s Guest Services desk.  It was a fabulous care-free, fun period of my life.  Looking back made me also reflect on the decade that has passed.  While so much has happened (some things better than others), it all seems to have gone by so quickly.  But I am happy with where I am right now in my life – and happy with where I am literally too!

Yesterday (Wednesday) was just spent in Denver itself – lazing around the house (my parents have a beautiful second home here); doing a bit of shopping (Andy got his Macbook Air and iPhone 4 – the iPad 2s were sold out last week already); and ended off the day with a rack of ribs each at the Hickory Smokehouse restaurant (it doesn’t get more American than that).

It was great to experience a few days of “home life” in Denver before continuing onwards with our nomadic existence.  (Thanks Mom for doing our laundry!)

We are currently on our way to the Caribbean!  But before we can board our luxury cruise, we have the small matter of a Half Ironman triathlon to get through.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now we are not so sure…  Having not trained in two weeks, and being a few Peanut Butter Cups down, things aren’t looking promising.  But the idea is to just go out and enjoy the day of the race (Saturday), and soak up the beautiful setting of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  At least we have the cruise ship waiting for us at the finishing line.  We’ll keep you posted on how it goes – if we make it!