A short walk, a great costume, some sledneckin' and a little CB crazyness

Hello Everyone-

Here are a few pics. The order, and therefore desciprtions are all scrambled, but you should be able to piece it all together.

The shot of the guy in an orange coat is Dodson on the high traverse into Hall of Fame bowl on Mt. Crested Butte, horrible traverse, but great skiing. The big splash in the pool is some one crashing during the pond skimming contest. What a hoot, a bunch of nutters trying to skim the pond and then throw tricks off the kicker at the far end- this guy crashed right into it, but at least half of the people made it. Good times.

The photo of Christie and I in ski gear is from a recent trip to Steamboat Springs. I had a little work to do there, so we made a weekend out of it. We had a fun trip, but only a couple pictures. Not to be snotty, but Crested Butte is way more picturesque.








(Sorry, having some issues with blog layout.) Had a blast snowmobiling with Mike and Birdsie a couple weekends ago. I hadn't been on a real powder sled in 6 years or so, wow have they gotten good. Check out the ski-in-the-air powder turns. We were just carving through this field as if you were skiing down a slope with 36" of fresh, a face shot every turn. For those of you who aren't familiar with powder skiing, it's about as fun as it gets, and flying along 'in the white room' on a sled is kind of like taking the mountain with you everywhere you go. Not very environmentally friendly, but those Dinosaurs are sure good for full filling the need for speed! Oh yeah, a pretty good shot of Birdsie jumping off the Kebler pass road as well. I abstained from that, or I am sure my snowmobile addiction would have kicked in again and I would have come home scheming about how to buy a sled for next year, which given we are probably going to want to buy some kid clothes is quite a bad idea.

There are a couple pics from our walk today. Ida was very excited to be out and playing in the snow. The expecting Mom was chatting with Jess (see photo above) while Ida and I played ball in the sunshine. You can't tell under that coat, but she -at least to my trained eye- is starting to show ever so slightly. The mountain in the background is Mt. Crested Butte, we were walking out from the edge of town to the North. The concrete thing is "The Gronk" a mysterious structure no one knows exactly what the original purpose was for, something from the old coal mine. It also happens to be what my old band was named after. Speaking of bands, I am playing music again. We had our first gig this Friday, and it was a big hit. We are playing in Gunnison next week, hopefully it goes as well.

A couple weekends ago (when CJ was out of town) Mike Arbaney, his neighbor Ashley and I were the Three Amigos. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the amazing costume -Mike, his roommate Chance, and Birdsie (all three of which went on the Grand Canyon trip with me last year) made them for Halloween. I can however take credit for the mustache, which I have to say adds that little something special.

The crazy brown snow is a result of a massive sand event that blew in Friday at about 5:00. This wall of red, nasty looking clouds moved in from the West and blanketed everything. Unbelievable. Christie actually pulled up CNN to make sure the world wasn't suddenly ending. The winds were off the charts. Now, everything is coated in red sand and we are likely to have a much faster run-off this spring from the solar effect of the sand, if we hit warm weather simultaneously I bet we see flooding- but that makes for great kayaking!!

And since this is a blog to keep people posted about baby... I officially am now in my second trimester and on Tuesday we heard baby's heartbeat!! On Saturday, August, our friends, and I had a fantastic day of skiing. It ended up being our last day of the season and it was a great day to end on. We went up today but the last day of the season is a real party here and having to enlist August and my friend as D (defense) wasn't ideal so August and I called it a day after one run. Also, conditions weren't nearly what they were yesterday. We're hoping baby will be skiing along side of us one of these days. We'll probably start baby on skis when s/he is 1. They have a kids magic carpet. Looks extremely dull but baby will have fun. That is, of course, only if baby is interested.

Hope you all are well- August & Christie