Yay, a new resort!

If you're wondering why 50% of our blog is taken up by skiing, that's because skiing is pretty much what we've been doing recently. Due to business travel, my ski season will end on March 14, so that means we have to pack it in.

We decided to maximize our 50% off lift ticket coupons by going to Monarch Mountain, which is down by Salida. It is a tiny resort but neither of us had ever been there, and it was reasonably priced. $54 for a lift ticket, and with our coupon? No-brainer!



Here I am at the top of the Skywalker run. It is the first time that I have been at the top of a Colorado mountain. You can see the trail map next to me. It is the green run that goes across the top of the mountain toward the left edge of the trail map, and then curves downward.



This view was utterly amazing. We are at the top of the Continental Divide, and the trail is labeled as such. The view is to the west. There wasn't exactly a horizon--more of a gentle fading into eternity.



Here's Jeff with the view from the same place, facing to the east. The view there is just as great as it was on the other side. Truly amazing. We had to stand there for a while, soaking it in.



The runs here were harder than the easier runs I had been doing at Copper. Here we are part of the way down the mountain. You can see the lodge and the parking lot, way down there! So we still had a ways to go. I had a couple of really ugly runs, meaning big snowplows and putt-putting across the slope, because as you probably all know I have an insane fear of falling.

Ironically... I did fall once at Monarch. It was on the babiest of hills, the Snowflake run. I think I leaned too far toward the slope, my ski caught and then I just kind of tipped over. I still don't know what I fell on! I didn't hurt myself, thankfully, and was more amused by the whole thing. I still don't know how to get up without taking my skis off, since this is only the second time I have fallen since starting up again. Guess I never learned before!



Here we are at the end of the day, in front of the lodge. Awwww.

After sharing a cup of hot chocolate, we decided that we will be back to Monarch--perhaps not this season, but next year. The drive alone is worth the trip!

Post-Valentine's Ski Day

This was our first there-and-back-again ski trip. We didn't stay overnight since it was Sunday. But I was excited because I got to try out my new skis!



Here's my first time standing on them. I had not been on skis this length since I hurt my knee. So far, so good. This little avenue is the stretch between the Easy Rider magic carpet and Green Acres. We are, of course, on our way to Green Acres because I'm too chicken to start with the Roundabout and West Ten Mile runs I had completed on the 130s with Steve.



Here's Jeff at the top of Green Acres. You can see that it was a really nice day. You can also see that Green Acres is nice and gentle--a great place to get my ski legs.



We moved on to bigger and better slopes after I got the hang of it. Here, Jeff is adjusting his ski on the wrench bench. Jeff got new skis too, ones that are more suitable for powder. They are shorter and a little wider and rounder than his other skis. So far he really likes them.



We ended up doing four hours worth of runs. I didn't want to stop for lunch! Here's me with my victory salute. Yay! It was a great day and I didn't fall on my new skis at all.



Rather than looking at me in this picture, check out the homes on the right hand side. These are new Lewis Ranch homes that are either for vacation rental or for purchase. They are ski-in/ski-out and are really super nice. I don't know what the rentals cost, but I was surprised to see that some Lewis Ranch properties were for sale for between $3 and $4M, which is less than I expected. Fodder for future dreams...

Valentine's Day

So we decided to try something different this year and get Valentine's Day dinner from Tony's Market. If you aren't from Denver, Tony's is a wonderful little family owned establishment that sells fine meats and gourmet groceries. If you want excellent meats and quality cuts, go to Tony's. Anyway, Tony's was offering a prix fixe pre-order dinner for two. All we had to do was reserve the dinner online in advance, show up on Valentine's Day, and pay. The re-heating instructions were included. When you think of re-heating anything, you think dry, chewy, tough or something else unpleasant. Not this dinner. It turned out perfectly.



Here is the first course. The red rose came with the dinner, so that was a nice decoration! There was an appetizer, artfully named Mascarpone and Fig Phyllo Purses. The fig inside reminded me of apple butter, but with fig instead. The phyllo didn't get dried out or too crisp. The salad was vanilla pear with lemon Stilton and candied pecans. To die for! You can see that Jeff broke out the wine, a German Riesling. I hadn't had wine in months.



Here's the second course. The main course was jumbo shrimp with homemade cocktail sauce, and an excellent Chateaubriand with wild mushroom sauce. To me, it's difficult to cook meats in general without making them too dry--you really have to pay attention. Re-heating meat universally makes it worse. But in this case, Tony's cooked its meat in such a way that reheating it made it perfect! It was wonderfully tender. The side dishes were roasted red potatoes with herbes de Provence, and dinner rolls.



Dessert! It is a heart-shaped cheesecake with strawberry swirl. That was really, really good! It had a graham cracker crust, but it was very finely crushed and perfectly moist.



Here is my present! I was VERY excited! The skis are 142s, so just a little longer than the ones I skied on the 25th. They are for "advanced beginners." I will write in my next post about how they did the first time on the slopes.

(If you're wondering what I gave Jeff, it was a subscription to Skiing magazine. I guess great minds think alike!)

We'll have to stitch up Bublé

The day before Valentine's Day, Chris Botti came to play with the Colorady Symphony Orchestra. As subscribers we had found out about the show months ago. This was fortunate for us, as the entire Boettcher Concert Hall was sold out. That's kind of a rarity, at least for the shows that we attend.

For the few who don't know who Chris Botti is, he is a jazz trumpeter. That's sort of like saying that Chet Baker or Maynard Ferguson were jazz trumpeters--there's sort of a lack of superlatives there. Anyway, Botti is stylistically very smooth and mellow. I discovered him in 1997 in a music shop in Boulder, the kind where they had CD players and headphones so you could listen to the entire CD, not just the pre-fab samples that someone else got to pick out. I listened to the whole Midnight Without You CD and bought it immediately. I have been a fan ever since.



In the picture above, he has migrated to behind the harp. During the program, we were treated to some of his tunes from his recent albums. He brought his band with him, which consisted of a guitarist, a bassist and a pianist. We also got to hear a tune from another jazz great, Miles Davis, as well as a Billie Holliday song.

One of the neat things about Botti's performance is that he migrated around the stage a lot. He didn't hog the spotlight when others were doing solos. Since Boettcher is in the round, there are a couple hundred people, at least, who are behind the stage. Botti turned around to face us quite a bit. This was a totally unexpected delight, since most performers do not do this.

Something funny: the woman in white on the balcony above Botti on the right was incredibly loud. At one point, the tune was really quiet and mellow, but you could her HER clapping throughout the entire theater. It was sort of amazing. Even Botti himself noticed, and commented on how... exuberant she was. Ha!

At the end, he said, "You know that song Fly Me To the Moon?" and everyone cheered. He said, "We aren't going to play it, because now that Michael Bublé has sung it, I can't play it anymore!" Most of you know that Fly Me To the Moon was Jeff's and my wedding song, so we were greatly disappointed, although Botti and his band did play another, less well-known Sinatra song, after he related his tale of playing with Sinatra's band in the early 1980's.



Jeff and I waited in a long line afterward for a chance to talk to Botti for a minute and maybe get some stuff signed. I ended up with a signed program and this picture. The poor guy was probably exhausted, since by that point it was nearly 10:30 pm, but he was gracious and very nice.

I told him how he had dashed our hopes of hearing Fly Me To the Moon, and he just smiled and said, "Yes, we'll have to stitch up Bublé!" It was the end of a perfect evening.

Jeff's Yuma Trip

Jeff went to Yuma for work last week. He will be updating this post soon.