Currently still in the same position as my previous post, listening to a new Youtube channel I found called COLORS that features studio sessions of music artists singing in bright colorful rooms. So many of these sessions are by recent artists that I’ve been enamored with, such as Goldlink, Jorja Smith, and Masego, and I’m so excited to hear these new versions of their songs. It’s absolutely stunning.
So MLK weekend, which was this past weekend. My college friends and I went to Colorado for the weekend for a ski trip. We flew in from all over the country, from SF, Seattle, Pittsburgh, New York, and Chicago on Friday. I actually flew in Thursday night with a red-eye flight because I wanted to work remotely from the Boulder office on Friday. After work, I explored Downtown Boulder for a bit and visited the Boulder Contemporary Museum of Art, the Dushanbe Tea House, and Pearl Street, where I explored in some bookstores and ordered a cup of chai.
Then I went back to the airport to meet my friends who flew in. We waited in line for a while for a rental car, and unfortunately, since we were all under 25 years old, the car rental company did not allow us to rent a 7-seater four-wheel drive. They gave us a minivan instead. We were worried about not having a 4-wheel drive, but the car rental person said it would be okay, so we took his word for it. We originally had plans to borrow skis from a friends’ house but the car wasn’t large enough, so we headed to Denver. We got dinner at a burger place called Bad Daddy’s and I built my own burger, which was pretty yummy.
Then we drove 2 hours to our Airbnb, which was near a town called Fairplay. It was quite a scary drive because we had to drive over a mountain pass. There was so much powdered snow blowing around, there was virtually no visibility and we could barely see ahead of us the road. We had to drive very slowly and turn our emergency blinkers on. It was terrifying. We were almost to our Airbnb when we reached a point on a snowy hilly road that our minivan couldn’t drive up. The van stopped and started sliding down. We tried to drive up but the van had no traction, and we started falling into the snow on the side of the road. We tried to push and rock the van but it wouldn’t budge and kept falling deeper in the snow. After a while, we realized that we had to do something different. We thought about calling a tow truck company, but all the companies were closed for the night and wouldn’t be able to get us until the morning (it was currently around midnight). We thought about walking the 3 miles to our Airbnb but it was below freezing out. Then we decided to call 911, and after multiple calls, they sent a police officer to us. The police officer told us that he could drive us in two trips back to Fairplay but he wasn’t sure where he would drop us off because the two hotels in the town were either at full capacity or closed because they were not answering the phone. He told us we would get frostbite if we walked, and we couldn’t stay in the car because our car only had heat for about 5 more hours. Our options seemed pretty bleak at that point. After a bit, he took a tethering rope and hooked it up to the back of his car and the front of our minivan. He then tried to pull us up out of the snow by driving up the hill and it surprisingly worked! Things started to look up from that point.
We then backed down the hill and drove back to Fairplay, weighing our options of trying to find a place to stay in Fairplay, driving back to Denver (2 hours away), or driving to the Copper Mountain Resort (1 hour away). We filled up on gas, and a group of us went to pee outdoors behind the gas station and that was quite the experience to say the least. The temperature was around 15 but was a “feels-like” 0 from all the high winds and snow. We then tried to look for hotel in Fairplay. The first place we stopped at was closed, but they had a map that led us to another hotel, which happened to be open and had two rooms. The hotel was a historical landmark and it had a plaque that boasted that it was haunted, but we were glad to have shelter for the night nonetheless. Then we slept for the night and drove to Copper Mountain to meet the other car group who had landed after us and stayed the night in Denver. I snowboarded for the first time and it was lots of fun! We mainly did some bunny slopes and got the hang of being boards. That morning, we had booked rooms in an inn near Copper, but there were only 4 queen beds and we had had 10 people. Reluctantly, we decided to just book the rooms and have 2 people sleep on the floor. When we arrived at the inn that night, we asked if they had any additional rooms, and they actually did have an extra room for just that one day, so we booked that additional room and another room for them to move into the next day. Thankfully, the next day that room was also available so the people staying in that room didn’t have to move.
The next day, we went snowboarding again for a couple of hours because we went in the afternoon. We then ended the night eating Italian at Greco’s in Frisco and playing games and drinking in our rooms. The day after, we checked out of our inn and drove back to Denver. We ate delicious pho at Pho 95, which apparently is one of the many numbered pho restaurants. Then we returned our snow chains, dropped off some friends at the airport, relaxed at a coffeeshop, and returned to the airport to eat dinner and fly out back home.
Looking back at the weekend, I’m just incredibly grateful that we didn’t have to pay for a tow truck to get us out of the snow and we were able to drive the minivan for the rest of the weekend, everyone had a bed to sleep on each night, and we got our Airbnb fully refunded. In terms of all the circumstances we hit, the consequences were probably the best that could’ve been. It’s definitely quite the story and trip to remember. Next time I go on a trip to Colorado, I definitely have a lot more knowledge under my belt, and I would not underestimate the terrain and logistics of planning a ski trip.
Phew, that was a wild trip. There were definitely lots of unexpected moments, but overall I’m glad I was able to see my friends over the weekend and spend some time catching up and having fun š
Cheers!
the world around me 