some highlights of the trip:
> the kids’ play areas in the denver airport: i think whoever designed them had wile in mind: they’re little nooks enclosed by 7-foot-high hockey boards, with rubbery floors. and sticking out of the rubbery floors like little hills was half a soccer ball, half a baseball, and a whole hockey puck, each about 3 feet across. i don’t know who was happier, wile or stephen. stephen now wants to install hockey boards on the walls of wile’s playroom....
> conversation that i had with the supremely unfriendly woman who took my order at the “colorado crappy airport grille” or wherever i got our lunch:
me: ...and a guacamole bacon burger, please.
s.u.w.: how would you like that done?
me: medium-rare
s.u.w.: we only do medium, medium-well, and well.
me (smiling!): as close to rare as possible.
s.u.w.: okay, that would be medium-well
me: ......um, actually, i think medium is closer to rare.
s.u.w.: fine, medium.
o-kay!
>the reason we went out there: the wedding was just lovely. the spot was gorgeous, a pretty restaurant on the yampa river (yampa! yampa! i can’t stop saying yampa!) with a backyard where the short and pretty ceremony was held and a deck where the delicious food was served (wasabi mashed potatoes and prime rib with shitake gravy, yes please). and a shuttle that came to take me back to the hotel just was i was hitting the i’m-still-on-ny-time-and-am-usually-asleep-by-midnight wall....
like balls, but more painful to be hit with: yesterday between checking out of the hotel and catching our flight we drove out to fish creek falls, which was very pretty and more importantly had a spot where you could get down by the water and throw rocks!
....and a lowlight:
the altitude sickness: me and the mountains just don’t get along. i spent the weekend feeling somewhere from vaguely to very dizzy and naseous. unfortunately this carried over to our flight on the little propellor plane from steamboat to denver.... thankfully the flight was pretty empty and we had extra seats around us and stephen was able to keep wile from crawlimg all over me. (he also told me that i shouldn’t feel altitude sick on the plane anymore b/c the cabin was pressurized and there was plenty of oxygen. oh, really? could you say that again a little louder so that my stomach can hear you, because right now it still wants to eject the shrimp tacos we had for lunch.) so i managed to keep it together. unfortunately the family a few rows in front of us didn’t fare as well: first the toddler started barfing and wailing, then the mom, who was about 5 months pregnant, started barfing. the dad was sitting between them passing wipes and barf bags in both directions....
aside from that one, though, the flights were pretty painless. wile was awesome. he needed constant entertainment and i think a couple times he whacked the person sitting in front of me on the head (sorry!), but there was very little crying and even a little sleeping. and the flight back into newark from denver was underbooked so he got his own seat:
yeah, he just put his head down on that pillow and went to sleep....
and though steamboat springs was beautiful, i was happy to only be there for a weekend. i’m just not made for ski towns. and it’s not just the fact that the altitude makes me all wonky and i don’t ski. it’s just.... look, the people are very nice. really. i just can’t take the whole ski bum attitude seriously. it’s like even if they don’t actually say “bro” at the end of every sentence, there is an implied “bro”. or perhaps a “right on”.
oh and what the hell is up with the straws out there? every single eating/drinking establishment that we went to had black straws. huh?
so except for the fact that the air here feels like dog breath, i'm happy to be home.
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