Telluride

S and I went to Colorado for the annual ski trip recently -- although for the first time in several years, not over Super Bowl weekend.  (Not that that means we had a great SB party at home; we did not even watch it.)

Anywho, we had a wonderfully uneventful pair of flights, and even arrived early!  It was shocking.  There is a first time for everything, I suppose.

We arrived in Telluride on Saturday, rented skis, and got set up for the next day.  Saturday was lovely and warm, but the slopes were pretty icy still, so we waited until Sunday to ski.  It was supposed to snow overnight on Saturday night, but really nothing of note came down.

We got out to go skiing on Sunday, and we weren't out too long before the snow started coming down. It was heavy and soppy and wet, but nevertheless it added a nice layer of several inches of soft stuff, especially up high on the mountain.

It continued snowing all night and through most of Monday, though it lightened up considerably and there was only a little bit of new snow on Monday.  Still, the skiing was good if somewhat disorienting due to the low-hanging fog.  If you went up high you could get above it and actually get a view, but then you had to ski back down through it, and skiing in white-out conditions is certainly an interesting endeavor.

For dinner Monday night, we headed to one of Dad's favorite spots in Telluride, La Marmotte.  It was a lovely, cozy little spot, French (as you might have guessed).  Though they were not on top of their game that night, according to more regular diners than myself, I still had a quite satisfying meal of spinach- and blue cheese-stuffed chicken with roasted purple potatoes.  S got the Colorado rabbit, which was pretty tasty, but the turnip puree that it was plated on was the winner.

Except for my cocktail, which I had as an appetizer and dessert: Esprit d'escalier.  It consisted of bourbon, Aperol, amaro, bitters, and a lemon twist.  And perhaps some other ingredients I am forgetting after two of them, plus a few sips of S's Flatliner, which is apparently the local town drink.  Fun fact about my drink though: it's French for "staircase wit," and is used in English to describe the phenomenon of thinking of the perfect reply too late.

We skied one final day on Tuesday.  There were some decent runs up high, but down low it was awfully icy.  But, to bastardize a quote from S, "a bad day skiing is preferable to a good day at the office."  Amen to that.

Dinner on Tuesday night was with A.  She and S climbed Mt. Shuksan together a year and a half back.  In the intervening time, she had quit her job as a high-paid lawyer in Manhattan and moved into her car.  She met a guy who lived about a half hour from Telluride and "moved in" with him (a.k.a. parked her car in his driveway).  The four of us had dinner at La Cocina, at which my big disappointment was the lack of any hard liquor besides tequila.  Consider yourself warned!

The following day we drove back to Durango and basically chilled for the last 24 hours of the vacation.  I did a little bit of work, we ate a lot of food, we drank some drinks, and then it was time to head home.