Christmas Vacation Boulder Style

As of this past Friday, Jesper and I have been on vacation! Vacation Boulder style isn't very relaxing, but we've been having loads of fun.

Actually, we weren't supposed to start our Christmas vacation until Saturday. We had intended to work on Friday, which would have made it the only Friday we would have worked this month. I had a big project that was due on Friday. I got the document on Wednesday late afternoon. Did I work on it all that day? Of course not! I had planned to take both Thursday and Friday to get through it. So, on Wednesday evening we were at our friends' Sue and Mike Bushman's house having a glass of wine and letting the dogs play together. Mike ans Sue have a condo up in the mountains and he was going up to ski on Friday. He asked if we could join them and that's when Jesper asked me if I would possibly be able to get through my project completely on Thurdsday so we could ski on Friday. I had never even thought of that! I wasn't sure I could get through the whole thing, but we said we'd try.

I spent the next day with my butt in my chair from 7:00 am until 4:00 pm, moving only to go to the bathroom. Jesper brought lunch up to me. When you work at home and are not interrupted by co-workers, you can bang out an amazing amount of work. Consequently, I was able to get my project done, with time to even make a last batch of cookies for the Cookie Exchange I was going to that night. Whoo-hoo! We called Mike and a couple other friends and made plans to ski Copper on Friday.

I was a bit nervous about skiing, since I had hurt my right ankle couple weeks earlier. Back in August, I sprained it and when skiing one Monday, I tweaked it skiing some moguls. For the next couple days, it hurt. Then I tried to ski on it the next Friday and it did not feel good at all. I stopped skiing after only a few runs and hung out at the bar. I rested my ankle for a few days and went out the next Monday to try it again. First run and the darn thing hurt a lot. I was super bummed and wondering if I'd done something really bad to my ankle. I skied down to a coffee shop (too early to drink beer) and proceeded to read a magazine. Then I took my boot off and was rotating my ankle when I felt a click, sort of like when I tweaked it on the moguls in the first place. Amazingly, it felt much better. It didn't feel perfect, but I ended up joining Jesper back out on the slopes for the afternoon!

However, on the start of our Vacation, I was nervous about the ankle, afraid I'd tweak it again the wrong way. I started out skiing really conservative and quite frankly not so good. But then I started to realize that the ankle was fine. Good thing, 'cause I ended up skiing some really awesome but difficult stuff with a bunch of really great skiers. We got to hit new areas of the back bowls just opened for the season - really fun but challenging terrain with all kinds of hidden goodies like rocks and the tops of trees. We finished the day coming down Triple Treat, a black diamond moguled run at 4:00pm. My legs were cooked, having teled all day long. It's hard to explain why the day was so fun, but it simply was; great skiing, great friends, beautiful scenery, fresh air, and maybe the beer at the end that Jonathan brought. Sorry no pics, as I forgot to charge my battery.

Needless to say, I was completely useless that night! I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to eat dinner. I love that feeling of playing so hard that you are utterly exhausted. I suspect many adults don't get that feeling very much. It's decidedly different than the exhaustion caused by lack of sleep and too many hours working!

We took Saturday off from skiing, mostly because we wanted to take Strelka out for some extended playtime. We slept in as much as the dogs and kitty would let us, had a nice breakfast of whole wheat french toast with bananas (YUM!) and then loaded up the pup (unfortunately Mushka is not able to go on long excursions anymore). We decided on a hike from NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research), which is located adjacent to some of Boulder's nicest hiking trails. It was a beautiful sunny day, albeit chilly, so we put Strelka's coat on her; darn thing has zero body fat to insulate her. She's pretty cute in her red coat!

The hike was great fun for Jesper and I and Strelka. Although us humans covered about 5 miles, Strelka did at least twice that. She ran up ahead of us and then zoomed back. She ran in crazy circles around us, all the while trying to eat snow on the fly. We laughed so hard! The hike achieved it's intended goal; for Strelka to get worn out having fun out in the snow. I even took her out again for a short walk near the house with Mushka and she almost wanted to stay home, she was so tuckered out. Needless to say, she slept well that night!

With a tired pup, we felt OK leaving the dogs again on Sunday to ski again. This time we met up with Sue, as Mike had to work. My legs were still tired from Friday's long day of skiing. It was super cold and windy, which might be why there were fewer people at the resort that one would imagine 2 days before Christmas. But we still had a great day and it kept getting better and better. I finally had to call it quits, since my legs were burning like mad. All those lunges...

I will sleep well again tonight, having enjoyed another vacation day, Boulder style.