Wed 31 Jan 2007
Today has been boring.
We have always planned our week-long ski trips so that we ski on Monday/Tuesday,Thursday/Friday and do something else on Wednesday. This gives us a chance to recharge our batteries, nurse our battle wounds, and get ready for the final push. One year we went snow mobiling on Wednesday. Another time we went snow tubing over at Keystone resort. This year, though, we haven’t really done anything.
I had planned to go out and do a bunch of photography on my day off, but it has been snowing all day today, which really destroys the nice photographic opportunities. So, we’ve sat around the condo and watched it snow.
We had thought about skiing today and taking Friday off. It’s going to be insanely cold on Friday. But, we ended up going with the normal plan. We’ll see how Friday goes. Frost bite will be a possibility, but I plan to be as wise as I need to be to prevent that from happening.
Last night’s visit to Bubba Gump was really good. I went simple with the Fish & Chips. It was really quite good, though. The fries were just standard seasoned fries, but the fish was quite good. After Bubba’s we thought briefly about having a crepe dessert, but ended up walking in the opposite direction.
On the way back to the condo we stopped into the Breckenridge Information Center. They have standard brochures about stuff around town there, and they also have a museum detailing Breckenridge’s past. The museum is really nice. It has a lot of information in it, and is well worth a visit. But, the real coup of the evening was chatting with the administrators of the musuem. We ended up talking to them for probably over an hour and the discussion ranged far and wide. The admin and his wife (both there) live about 30 minutes south of Breckenridge on Highway 9. They can’t afford to live in Breck. The overwhelming majority of people who work around here can’t afford to live here. This is one of the things that makes Breck such a unique environment compared to everywhere else I’ve ever spent any time. Anyway, the guy is a certified ski instructor and we had a really good chat about the ski runs. He actually recommended a black (Cimarron) over some of the blue-blacks that we had been investigating. So, I might just get brave and try one tomorrow or the next day. Doing the runs early in the day was definitely recommended (fresher snow that hasn’t been scraped off by a bunch of people).
This couple has lived in Colorado for about 11 years. They moved from Ohio and don’t make near as much money now as they used to, but they enjoy their life a lot more. They said that Highway 9 is usually kept in better shape during the winter than the Interstate itself. They said that the road can get kinda busy when the shift changes occur at Breck. So many people that work here live in that direction that it can cause traffic.
The town of Breckenridge is planning to take over control of the various museums in town. Apparently there are a bunch of them. Something like 15 or so. Who knew? Anyway, they are going to hire a manager to be over the administration of all of these museums, and the pay for the job is going to be 70k. So, a high level town administration position salary is 70k. In a town where a 2 bedroom condo goes for 4-500k.
Supper, which is a major event around the condo, took a while to decide upon tonight. We had a few more restaurants on tap that we wanted to try out. We wanted to do the crepe place for a dinner crepe (followed by a dessert crepe, of course). Brian was saying last night that last year we went to the crepe place 3 nights. Before tonight we had only been there once this year. Here’s a pic of the crepe place, btw, that Brian took last year. We also wanted to visit Tokyo Taipei, which is a nice oriental place that we went to last year. And, there is a pizza place in town that has wheat crust pizza. We went there last year, but they didn’t give us a whole wheat pizza like we asked for. But, since I had pizza a couple of nights ago, we decided that the pizza was optional this year. So, we changed things around a little bit. We decided that we could pass on having the crepe-only night. We decided to go to an Irish pub tonight. They have a shephard’s pie that sounded good. We got there and they were full. We could have waited around, but we decided to go to another place instead. There was a steak place that had a sirloin for a reasonable price, so we went there. Kenosha Steakhouse was the name of the place. I got the Kenosha special sirloin, and it was merely OK. I’ve had much better steak. It came with mashed potatoes and broccoli. No bread or salad. Salad was an option for a price.
After the steak house we went by a couple of outdoor stores. We were looking for good gloves. We found some that would probably have been good, but they were very expensive. I ended up buying a new pair of glove liners. They are a freaky gold color that would look right at home on a 12 year old girl playing dressup in the 1980s. But, since they are a liner, they won’t be visible most of the time. And, I got a couple of pairs of hand warmers. I think it is going to be really cold the next couple of days, so they might come in handy.
After that we went to the crepe place. I got a raspberry chocolate cream crepe. It was good. Bill got a pumpkin pie crepe, and Brian went with a S’Mores crepe. Right after us a girl ordered a crepe and was commenting that she was living in town, but hadn’t been to the crepe place. So, I struck up a conversation with her afterwards. She said that she had lived in Paris for a while and had gotten burned out on crepes. She was studying for her EMT license, was going to live in Breck until May or so, was a 6-months at a time type of person. She grew up in Georgia, had lived in Switzerland, and she worked at the Mother Loader tavern. And, she wasn’t bad looking, not that it really mattered.
After that… back to the condo and preparation for tomorrow.
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