Colorad-whoa

At our third day at Breckenridge, we carried out the usual pattern: park the car, ride the bus to the gondola base, get the gondola to the top, go to the bathroom, get on the chair lift, ski. It's a fairly slick operation and sees you on the mountain roughly 30 minutes after parking. Except that day we got caught somewhere between the bathroom and the chair lift.

We came out of the plush bathroom at the top of Peak 7. I don't know why the mountains are just numbers, seems a bit impersonal to me and not the most imaginative. But then I've already told you of our plans for our ski resort. I had forgotten to bring my trail map from our other days there so lifted one from a promotional stand in the hall. I tried not to look at the man by the stand, lest he make me pay for something I didn't need. Well, we've all been accosted by these types.

The next thing I knew Megann was engaged in a conversation with him because unbeknownst to me Megann also tried to pick one up but was told we'd need to share! Huh! The cheek. Then, and I'm not too sure how it happened, we had got into a conversation about owning apartments in the very building we were standing in.

Who lives in a place like this?

Actually, upon reflection, a lot of it came down to Megann asking how we could get one of the Breckenridge hats that were on the table in front of him. Next thing we knew, despite being told we'd have to share trail maps, we were we were being handed over hats and t-shirts and offered $125 for taking a tour of the facilities. Well ok then!

Louie, the man who signed us up, knew a lot. He knew that we did not have the money to be actually buying one of these timeshared apartments, he knew to tell us to lie about our income when we got up there and he knew that the currency in Ireland is the Irish dollar. Ok, he knew some stuff.

Louie told us where we needed to be, when and most importantly how we'd get our $125. Louie knew we were in it for that. And the hats. And no doubt he was rewarded in commission for getting us to go.

So at the appointed time, we were back inside and looking for where we needed to go. We couldn't find it, so we went back down to our friend Louie to ask him. He was more than helpful, and took us directly there himself. Or maybe he just wanted to be sure to give us another pep talk about our 'salaries'. We walked into the reception and we were shown where we could leave all our skiing accoutrements for the tour. Louie had told us that we wouldn't be walking round in our ski boots, instead we'd be given 'soft shoes'.

Turns out these sandal type affairs were the 'soft shoes'. I, for one, have never looked classier.

We took seats on the sofa, filled out the necessary paperwork and helped ourselves to all the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, hot chocolate, granola bars and soft drinks we thought was reasonable to take. I had 3 cookies, a cup of hot chocolate, two granola bars for the road and a can of Pepsi. Perfectly reasonable I'd say.

Clint, our tour guide (I'm sure he has a fancier title than that), met us at the sofas and took us back to his bull pen office. There we were told about the great offer that awaited us today and all that we would get if we signed up today. This took about twenty minutes - it was quite the deal and Clint liked to talk about all its advantages. In detail.

I was in the grips of a cold and after furnishing me with tissues to take on the tour and antibacterial gel for himself (evidently worried that he too would be struck down by the plague) we set off on the tour.

We were shown the grand lobby and told of its wifi capabilities, pianist and saw for ourselves the log fire that awaits when you come in from the snow. Then we were taken the indoor/outdoor aquatics area (that's the pool to you and me), the grotto (hot tub affair and sun loungers), the luxury spa (all our treatments would be free), the fitness facility (the treadmills look out to the mountains you could be walking on), the studio (you know, practice for all those dance recitals I do), the game room (arcade games and pool) and the private cinema (seats 12...in reclining armchairs).

Clint whisked us round so fast it was quite hard to take it all in. It was breathtaking. If I was to stay there, there would be a real possibility of me not wanting to ski, despite its ski in/ski out location (Clint had us well versed in the terminology).

We went up to an apartment to view it. And, like the rest of it, it was amazing. Everything was marble, solid wood or the finest Egyptian cotton. We toured round, checking out fixtures and fittings, you know, as potential buyers do. We asked intelligent questions and oohed and aahed at the right times.

While Clint's back was turned, Megann checked out the bed.

This was one of two bathrooms (in a one bedroom apartment).

The kitchen, was like Clint said it would be, 'well appointed'. Clint even showed us the slow cooker which we could start before we left for the day's skiing to come back to in the evening.
How well he knows us.

While we were looking in bedroom a genuine worry came over me of how in the world we were going to get out of this. For all his pleasantness, I had deduced the Clint drove a hard bargain and liked to make a sale and I could tell we were going to have to work for all the free stuff. Like I once noticed in the National Cathedral, there's no such thing as a free cookie.

As we walked back to the office, the funniest bit of the whole escapade took place. Clint had been keen to know of our other ski trips and asked where we had stayed. We told him, aside from two places, we stay with friends. "Bummer" he said (or words to that effect), not quite understanding the amazing hook up with have there. He asked where we had stayed at these resorts, "Were they rooms or suites?" Megann answered, in complete truthfulness, that in Steamboat we had stayed in a suite. I'm pretty sure that the Bunny Ears Motel, Suite 400 was not what Clint was imagining, yet it made us sound so grand. This thought must have crossed Megann's mind because seconds later she had burst into a fit of laughter and ducked behind a plant pot to regain composure.

Back in his office we talked numbers. I can't remember them all now, but it was clear neither me or Megann were going to be getting into this. But we let him say his piece, and once again go through the many advantages we'd get from signing up today. We uh-uhhed in the right places and looked thoughtfully as if to weigh up the options. Then we asked to go away and think about it some more. Megann even added she might need to call some people. Nice touch. So it must have looked quite promising for Clint.

But if there had been any doubt in his mind whatsoever that we weren't serious it was confirmed by two rookie mistakes from both Megann and me.

Megann, on leaving his office, asked him where we would get our $125 from. Well that was the whole reason we were going through the charade (that and the hats, we couldn't possibly have known about the cookies) but we were going to see about 4 people on the way out. One of them would know! I would never have made such a rookie mistake.

Oh no. I made a much bigger one. I asked the receptionist how I could get one of their Breckenridge branded thermo-cups. I had seen the pile of the them and it have a sign saying 'Refer a friend to receive more great gifts' so I asked what one would have to do to refer a friend. Don't think I wouldn't have given them a bunch of email addresses for as many Breckenridge thermo-cups as I could carry! Turns out you have to own there and give the addresses of six friends to get one cup! A mite harder than I was expecting. They'd just given us hats willy and indeed nilly!

But the thing was, Clint was standing right there! Oh die. Megann had literally just asked where we get free money, and here I was asking how I could bag a free thermo-cup! Nice one Tina. He shouted over that he'd sort us out with some if we came back to sign on the dotted line that afternoon. "Alright then, thank you" I said in my cheeriest voice possible, all the while wanting to crawl away.

So there you have it. The story of how, for a week every other year, we could own property in Colorado. When we got back home we told everyone about it and Myles, being quite fancy with numbers, worked out that it would cost around $800 us a night to stay there.

At that price, you're darn tooting you'd be sorting me out with some free thermo-cups Clint!

Colora-d'oh

Hi, my name is Tina and this year skiing I fell off a chairlift.

Now, wait just before you get all panicked about whether I'm still able to use my legs let me explain.

The story starts right at the beginning of our trip when Megann and I were exchanging our Christmas and birthday gifts. One of the worst things skiing is having to carry your skis while walking in your ski boots. That is certainly the least fun thing about skiing, and certain resorts make you carry them a long way. Winter Park, I'm looking at you!

Megann, realising this, took action with her gift to me by getting me a back pack which has different straps to carry your skis with (or snowboard, if you are so inclined). Megann usually skis with a small back pack anyway, but I just filled my pockets with everything. But now that I had a backpack to use and one that so handily doubled up as a ski carrier, then why not!

Things were all fine, skiing with the backpack. It takes just a minor adjustment to your skiing, and it proved quite handy that I could take more stuff on the mountain. Well that was until C-chair.

We were skiing in a new area of the mountain and came upon C-chair and we decided to take it. It was the smallest chairlift we'd taken this trip, just two seats and as we were in the line I noticed how it didn't really slow down any for people getting on. It also seemed to undulate once you were on. In fact on the way up we joked that C was for seasick!

The chairlift was long and quite slow. Eventually we got to the top, lifted the bar (which didn't have footrests like 90% of chair lifts), lifted our ski tips to set on the off ramp (I'm sure that's not the term) and stood up.

Except I couldn't. I tried not to panic, and just said to Megann  "I can't stand up!". I tried again, but no, something was stopping me from standing up. I said it again, with a bit more emergency in my voice. I sat back down again as Megann skied down the ramp. You only really have seconds to get off a chairlift and my two attempts had used up all the time I had. A vision flashed before me of me heading all the way back down the mountain and having to travel back up on the slowest chairlift in history.

But I needn't have worried. For all its slowness travelling up the mountain, C-chair picks up speed as it goes round the corner to head back down. The centrifugal force forced me off the chair and into the pile of snow about 4 feet below. Unfortunately whatever was stopping me standing up wasn't enough to hold on to me round the corner.

When I landed I was surprised I wasn't more hurt. Or even hurt at all. But I looked round and saw everyone at the top just staring at me. Oh die. The chairlift operator came running over to see if I was ok. She said  "you didn't need to bail, I stopped it". I looked and saw that the chair lift was indeed stopped a couple of feet on from where I had fallen. I replied (in a tone one might expect when one had just fallen off a chairlift) that I didn't 'bail', I fell and not through choice. She helped me get my skis and moved me out of the way so that she could start the chair lift again. Well the show must go on.

I can't be absolutely sure, but I am fairly confident that it was the backpack that was stopping me standing up. The bar must have trapped it with the back of the chairlift and so I wasn't able to stand up to get off. Even though it was mostly to do with the rinky dink chairlift we were on; the single bar with no footrest and the fact it didn't slow down at any point going around, I decided that my few short days of skiing with a backpack were done. I would now be stuffing my pockets again. Well, it's only vanity to want to take your woolly hat to cover up your helmet hair at lunchtimes anyway.

Even though I wasn't hurt, I was fairly shaken up after it. Megann said I was as white as a sheet. Thinking back on it, I think it was more the fear once I realised I couldn't get off that was worse rather than the actual fall. I did manage to get back on a chairlift again, well they are fairly crucial to the whole skiing experience. I just drew the line at getting on C-chair again.

Megann waited a few days before telling me there was a ski lesson full of kids going on right beside 'the incident'. The ski instructor used me as an example of how not to get off a chairlift.

"Sometimes that happens when you don't get off". Yes, yes it does.

Colorad-snow

See what I did there? Because it's Colorado but there's lots of snow there, especially this time of year. Oh, you got that. Ok then.

So yes, Colorado. Good times. Last you heard we'd gone to the skating on New Year's Eve. It was a really fun way to spend it. I'm not the biggest fan of New Year's, all a bit of an anti-climax, but this was cool.

A proper pose from my camera. That's the lakehouse in the background you can see. I've read afterwards the lake provides 8 acres of ice. Needless to say we didn't skate on all of it.

They had these fire pits all around the rink and gave out skewers and marshmallows. Nice.

There were a few ice sculptures around the place, added to the atmosphere.

It's a bear!

But these on the way out were hard to beat. Life size ice sculptures!

We were excited for 2011.

With 2011 underway it was time to get down to skiing. Except that it was freezing. Like I said reportedly -25c. So we took down the Christmas tree instead. It was quite the job actually, being as it was 16ft tall.

We had a competition to see who could find the last decoration on it. And I'm happy to tell you, Princess fans, I won! Thank you, I'd like to thank my mum, my dad and of course, my optician.

So with the tree down and temperatures closer to zero (fahrenheit) we got down to the business of skiing. We were skiing in all new places this year, which was exciting. If we were sad about not skiing in some of the places we loved other years, we forgot about it getting off the first chairlift of the trip.

Ah the Rockies.

I do heart a blue sky.

We were only two days into our skiing adventure when disaster struck, Megann got hurt when she fell. I didn't see what happened exactly. I saw her on the ground, trying to get back up and it seemed to be taking a while, so while I waited downhill I watched a real life rescue of another skier. He was being bundled into one of those stretcher things for ski patrol to take him down. Eventually Megann made it over to me and promptly fell again. I realised something was wrong when I worked out that she was crying and not laughing. I took my skis off and ran up to her and struggled to get her skis off. It was coming close to 4 o'clock and so the lift operators were making their way down. One of them, a girl on a snowboard, stopped beside us. With Megann lying on the ground, crying, and me sitting beside her she asked "Is she crying?".

I replied "Yes, she's crying!"

And with that she snowboarded off into the sunset, as it were. I thought for a second she was off to radio for help and then I realised how the conversation must have gone from her end:

"Is she fine?"

"Yes, she's fine!"

Oops. But who asks a question like that anyway. Wouldn't you say "is she ok?" or "is she alright?". So with the realisation that this girl wasn't off to get ski patrol, we thought about what to do next. The problem was with Megann's knee. That day I had brought with me the tape the physio gave me for my Nadal knee so because Megann thought she could give skiing a go at least, we taped that round her knee and set off. Thankfully we made it down the slope and back home. 

In the morning though, we her knee swollen, we decided that we should take a break from skiing. It didn't affect our lift passes, so it was a lazy morning in the house, a trip to the mall and my beloved Panera.

Fuji apple salad I love you.

The next day, Megann again felt that she shouldn't ski, so I went out on my own. I've never even so much as done a run on my own so this was a whole new experience for me. On my first chairlift up I changed my mind about four times as to what I was going to ski. We chose a good place, with lots at the base for Megann and well, slopes for me. I made Megann videos for her to see what it was like.

Yes, 'a wagon and a jump and a bridge and stuff'.

There were lots of photos of me like this that day.

Or like this.

Although there is a proper one too. The lady that took this picture interrupted my video making to get me to take a photo of her and her daughters so I got her to repay the favour. Plus it gave me the opportunity to explain that I wasn't talking to myself.

Excitingly, we skied at Vail this trip! When I first started dreaming of skiing in Colorado about the only ski places I had ever heard of were Aspen and Vail. Turns out that Colorado have tons of places to ski, ones that you don't need to sell a kidney to afford. But as I was throwing all caution to the wind with this trip this year, what the heck, ski at Vail?! Ok! And my goodness, you need to build up to it, it is huge. Massive. 

Brilliant!

This is me skiing down one of the back bowls. So normally there's the front side of the mountain, and some places have back bowls. Well Vail has a whole other part at the bottom of the back bowls - you don't have to get a lift back up to where you came from! Oh no, you can go to Blue Sky Basin! I love blue skies. I love Vail.

But there are a lot of catwalks to get you places on the mountain. Catwalks were not our favourite. They are slow and not very exciting.

This is on a catwalk. Otherwise known as the slow boat to China. That's Megann in the background. You daren't stop on a catwalk or you'll never get going again.

Who knew Vail was in continental Europe?!

They are just all about winter at Vail.

A chair made of skis! Clever.

Even though (or maybe because) we were skiing in all new places, I kept getting flashbacks of other places we've skied in Colorado. Like a certain run, a chairlift, or the lodge would remind me of somewhere else. At the end of our first day at Vail, I was skiing down to the base and was thinking how I hadn't had that feeling all day, that is was like nowhere else we had skied. Well the clever people at Vail must have realised that too because that's only their tagline (or words to that effect). 'Vail: Like nothing on earth'. Ha!

I still maintain if the leaders of the world were to go skiing together there'd be less war.

Conversations with celebrities

Colorado pictures are still coming, just as soon as I muster up the strength to deal with Blogger and its resistance to me laying out my post as I want to. In the meantime though I thought I'd tell you about my recent conversation with a celebrity. I know, you read that right.

Well, I say celebrity. You might disagree but he has a weekly television show and a Wikipedia page so that must prove it. And I said conversation, which so long as we're counting twenty-first century social networking interactions then it counts.

I've mentioned Twitter before. I love it. It's a really good way to keep up to date with things you're interested it and points you in the direction of things you might not come across. One of the people I follow is Dan Walker, presenter of Football Focus on BBC1. Yes, he is the aforementioned celebrity. My friend Ruth told me I should follow him during the World Cup because he was quite funny and well, interesting. At that time he was on a bus touring South Africa and would tweet a lot about that. "Fair enough, interesting, I'll give him a follow" I thought. Once the World Cup ended he kept tweeting about golf (of which I have very little interest) and then the football season started so was all into that. Now, truth be told, I don't watch Football Focus, I don't watch MotD, I don't have a team that I follow, and I have what can only be described as a passing interest in the beautiful game. But he's funny and he seems to have a certain thing to tweet each day. Like Friday's lunch news and the Thursday quiz. One of the things that also emerged from his tweets was that he goes to church. Although you can also read about that on his Wikipedia page.

Anyway, now you know the background, I'll get to the story. So there I was on Sunday evening reading my Twitter timeline. He'd just tweeted something and so to relieve the boredom of waiting for Dancing on Ice to start (or maybe it was already on, who knows?) I click to read all his tweets (Non-Tweeters: only his general tweets and ones to people I also follow show up in my feed but I can read all his tweets by looking at his profile. Tweets that start with @name are directed to that person specifically). He was saying some kind of strange things to people, like:

@name Well that's very nice of you. Plenty would disagree but that means a lot. Thanks.

Someone had said something nice to him about Football Focus and he was replying. Good stuff. A scroll through some more of his tweets revealed that some tweets he gets weren't always as nice. He responded with a courteous kind of 'thanks for the feedback'. But there was one exchange which got me. It went something like this:

Everyone tune into BBC1 at 12.15 to experience @DanWalkerBBC 's shit patter. 

Nice. Dan was tagged in this so he'd definitely intended him know this chap's (I've changed his Twitter ID to PoliteJoe) thoughts on him but how did Dan respond? Would he ignore him? No, otherwise that's a crap story. Would he bad mouth him back? No, instead Dan said this:


@PoliteJoe I might get the continuity announcer to use that intro next week!!

He totally un-zinged him. He took the heat out of what he said and made a reasonably funny joke out of it. But was our Joe done? Was he heck:

@DanWalkerBBC Wooooo! Bellend. 

A charming response there from Joe. But once again, Dan replied not in the way you might think would be deserving of someone like Joe:

@PoliteJoe You seem like a lovely fella. May I politely direct you to the unfollow button if you find me so distasteful? See you soon.

Now, maybe Dan, with BBC in his twitter name, couldn't call him the names he wanted, but he could have just said nothing. He didn't do that though. He was polite back to someone who had just rude to him. I thought that was fairly classy. So I told him so:

@DanWalkerBBC You sir, are a class act.

I know people who write to celebrities all the time. I don't. Mostly because it seems very few write back. Would Dan? Of course he would:


@Tinarena22 Why thank you good lady

Dan called me good lady! Sure, I had to call him sir, but still!! But then I thought he might wonder why I had tweeted him and surely the sort of behaviour he demonstrated should be commended. So I said:


@DanWalkerBBC :) Was reading some responses you made to people's criticisms. Like I said, a class act. Keep up the good work!

Dan, or Super Dan as I now like to call him, replied again:


@Tinaarena22 Ta

So there you have it, Dan Walker said thanks to me. Twice.

We're practically mates.

I'm here, I'm here

Look at this. Just three weeks after my resolution to write more I am back on my blog. It wasn't so easy to blog from Colorado. Well just take a look at the shape of the blog post I did manage. The layout annoys me. Plus I got sick towards the end of Colorado, actually right in the middle. Skied on, trooper that I am, but I did have afternoon sleeps and early nights. Still got a bit of a cough at the minute but I'm doing my best to eradicate afternoon sleeps.

Skiing stories will come, just as soon as I have the energy to tackle photos on Blogger, but for now you will receive a rant about one of my favourite TV shows ever, The Daily Show. It's been shown on More4 for the past 5 years or so (apparently...I've been watching since 2008 and my return). I watched it in NC and the weekly Global Edition in Singapore and you might remember I went to see a show be taped when I was in NYC in January 2008.

WELL...

More4 have only gone and decide to stop showing it. Gutted. Beyond belied. Because I watched on Sky Planner I totally missed the announcement that came at the end of the last show before Christmas:

"and that's the end of The Daily Show on More4 but the Global Edition returns on Monday 10th January."

From four shows a week to a hotch potch, mishmashed one episode?! That hardly seems fair!  The best stuff Jon Stewart does is at the beginning of the show when he shows clips from the news channels and makes fun of their one sidedness/over-reaction/misunderstanding of events. The majority of this is all cut to about ten minutes. The guests too, cut down from four to just one. Last week, according to their website, they had Denis Leary (an actor), Colin Firth (an actor...you knew that, right?), Tim Pawlenty (former Minnesota Governor and potential 2012 Republican candidate) and Ron Howard (Sunday, Monday, Happy Days, oh, and an Oscar award winning director). Who was the guest they chose to put out on the Global Edition? Denis Leary! Not just my last choice of interview to see, but I'd say probably yours too.

The interwebs has been a buzz with the decision from More4. No really it has, you just have to look for it. There's an article here from the Guardian. One here from the New Statesman and forums and blog posts and Facebook pages.

For my part, I have written two emails, one to Comedy Central asking them to consider showing the proper Daily Show on their UK channel. Well, it is a Comedy Central show after all. No reply yet from them. Hmm. Probably just looking into their finances and where to schedule it?

The second email I wrote was to the good people at Channel 4/More4 who made this decision. From having done my research on t'internet, I knew there was a copy and paste email that I was bound to get back. So to beat them to it, I pasted it in to my email along with expressing my disappointment that such a great show be stopped in the UK. The typical response from C4 reads something like this:

Thank you for your e-mail. We are sorry to read that you are disappointed about More4's decision to discontinue showing The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show has been a fixture of weeknights on More4 for five years now and - just like with 'Friends' on E4' - the time eventually comes to say goodbye to programmes we've loved to make way for other programmes.

The Daily Show is an US acquisition and while we will continue to buy overseas programmes for More4, we have decided to spend more of the More4 budget on local commissions such as True Stories, which help support the UK independent production sector.

You will still be able to view The Daily Show Global edition every Monday on More4. We've also got our own home-grown satirical take on the week's news coming up later this year on Channel 4 in the form of the 10 O'Clock Show, which we hope you will enjoy.

Please be assured your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Someone Someone
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries


So my email included these points which I politely asked them to respond to:

1. The 10 o'clock show is unproven as yet. Can you confirm it will cover American politics and get equally important 'big name' guests such as Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Condoleeza Rice?

2. While it is available on iTunes, it costs £10 for 16 episodes. Can you provide me with contact details to Courvoiser (the UK sponsors) so as they could continue to sponsor my viewing of The Daily Show?

3. Friends ended in 2004 and the repeats have been shown here on E4 for more than six years. Are there plans for repeats of The Daily Show to be shown 4 or 5 times a day on More4 for an equally long time? I ask, because you are the one who made the comparison to Friends.

I'm not hopeful of any sort of different reply to the kind others have received, but it might make someone smile, somewhere, somehow.

Interestingly, one of the people who can use their sway to reverse this decision is Jay Hunt, the new Chief Creative Officer at C4. You might have heard of her before, she's the woman who cut Adrian from Friday nights at The One Show to make way for Chris Flipping Evans, which caused Adrian to leave the BBC and Christine to follow suit. 

I shan't hold my breath then.

(If you'd like to join the protest and log your complaint, email ViewerEnquiries@channel4.co.uk. Go on even if you don't care send them a wee email saying you're disappointed.)

Here's to 2011!

[I hate pictures on Blogger. Please understand this is not how it should be laid out.]

I flew out on Thursday morning to Colorado. New year's in Colorado? Who wouldn't want that?! I was nervous about my flight because of the weather in Ireland and the east coast and a check on the airline website didn't help matters when I saw that Wednesday's flight was cancelled because of mechanical problems. As if the snow hadn't been bad enough lately.

So I was keen to get the gate and only stopped for the briefest moment in one shop before heading to the toilets at my gate. My gate was pointed left, the toilets right. So I walked left following the signs only to discover that I was just walking in a circle around to my gate and could have walked directly. Ah well. As I passed the mens', I saw out of my peripheral vision the guy that had been walking towards me stopped. Like just stopped. I looked at him to see why he stopped. Only to discover it was Jools! 

Me and actual Jools.
We had a little hug, mini conversation and even high fived  because our new ski coats have thumb hole cuffs. I know, we are so cool. Then he went on his merry way and I went on mine.

But here are the remarkable things about the encounter:

1. Way back when I was booking my trip Jools considered coming along. In the end he didn't. Obviously. I saw him at the airport anyway because he was going on his own ski trip on the same day and time of day.

2. He was only at my area of the airport because he'd read on Facebook that another friend of his was at my gate for another flight.

3. I stopped for the right amount of time in shops and walked anti clockwise round to the toilets, while Jools walked clockwise. If we'd walked the same way we wouldn't have seen each other.


Coincidence? Yeah, probably.


The flights were ok. Not my favourite. I didn't make friends on the flights at all. But I will write these messages to the people sitting beside me, should they stumble across this site they'll know who they are and that their behaviour was not appreciated. 


So to the woman in 15D to Philadelphia, thanks for not moving your foot out of my way the entire 7 hour flight. That was helpful. It was also a really nice way to be greeted, the way you were bitching and moaning about the seats and demanding to know if I had switched with someone to get an aisle seat. That really set up the travel experience we were about to share. That said, sorry I farted. That was perhaps a little vindictive of me.

And to the couple sitting beside me to Denver, it was just adorable that you were all over each other on the flight. Charming. And don't think I that didn't realise what was going on when you both disappeared to the toilets part way through the flight.

So if you need me in the next while, just follow the trail of green fluff. I knew there was a reason why I hadn't worn that jumper in ages. It sheds its fluff all over. 

There are floors like this all the way between Ireland and Denver. I hate you green fluff.


If I combined all the parts I could make a new jumper. Or we could burn it as some sort of alternative to fossil fuel. Ridiculous. I must make a mental note not to wear it when committing any crimes. It'll sell me out. Actually, if I was to burn the jumper, I still think I'll be haunted by it. I may even have nightmares of a big giant green ball of fluff chasing me down the slopes.















































I'm all for sitting beside men in uniform usually but this guy would probably have been given a demerit for the green fluff on his impeccable uniform that would result for sitting beside me.


I arrived in Denver two minutes early. Efficient. Megann, coming from Detroit, was two and half hours late. Less efficient. I was wrecked by the time we made it out 'home'. Wrecked. 

Denver can handle snow. When we were coming in to land we flew over, no kidding, about forty snow ploughs all in formation on the runway. Maybe that's our problem? Denver has hogged all the snow ploughs.


Last night we watched fireworks and skated on the lake. 

It was freezing cold. But I can still look like a pro. Kind of.


Today we should be skiing. But the high, the HIGH is -25°C so we thought maybe we should acclimatise to the altitude just one more day. So far we have yet to make it out of our jammies. Well if you can't ski on the first day of the year, second best is to be in jammies.