Colorado Interregnum (I)

Started: 2016-02-04 18:40:33

Submitted: 2016-02-04 19:15:36

Visibility: World-readable

In which the intrepid narrator spends a week in Colorado between big international trips

Under normal circumstances, I'd have plenty of time to recover from a big international trip before I even thought about heading anywhere else. This year, however, is anything but normal. I planned my start date at my new job to give me the month of January off, and in that time I scheduled a two-week trip to China. I had one week after returning from India before leaving for China, which was just enough time to recover from jet lag before flying to a different part of Asia and flipping my body clock on its head all over again.

My week in Colorado coincided with our au pair's vacation, which meant that Kiesa took the week off as well so she could take care of Julian. Without regular child care, I spent most of my time trying to avoid hearing Julian fuss while Kiesa tried to take care of him and do other stuff around the house at the same time. This left all of us more stressed out than would have been optimal.

We did manage to get a babysitter for a few hours on Friday to see The Force Awakens in 3D at Longmont's brand-new movie theater at their brand-new resurrected mall. I thought the new Star Wars movie was even better the second time, since I wasn't worried that it wasn't going to be any good, and I could just sit back and enjoy the movie.

The one thing I did have planned for my Colorado interregnum was to go on a family ski trip on the weekend, taking advantage of my Epic Local pass (giving me unlimited access to Breckenridge, Keystone, and A-Basin), and Calvin's free Epic Schoolkids pass (giving him four days of skiing at each of Vail's resorts in Colorado) and the free first-time lesson they offered with the pass. (Getting a free ticket for Calvin may have influenced my choice to buy my own Epic pass rather than another pass this ski season.) I went to AirBnB and booked a condo in Silverthorne for the weekend, but Kiesa was up sick Thursday night, having apparently caught Julian's stomach flu. She pulled herself together enough to decide that we could go on the trip after all, so when we got back from Star Wars on Friday afternoon we picked Calvin up from school, packed the car (which involved way more baby stuff than I remembered needing), and headed up I-70 to Summit County.

We hit some westbound traffic on I-70, and by the time we got to Dillon it was late enough that Julian was fussing and needed to go to bed. We picked up take-out at Noodles and tried to find our condo. The directions I received were a little lacking, and Google Maps put the condo building in the wrong place, so I ended up driving around in circles for ten minutes before I figured out where we were supposed to go. In the process, Calvin got sick, over the floor of the car before Kiesa managed to give him the basin she'd brought for herself.

The condo was a cozy two-bedroom unit in the Wildernest neighborhood, which appears to be entirely condo developments on the hillside above Silverthorne. Kiesa put Julian and Calvin to bed, and I started to worry about whether we'd be able to make it to ski the next morning.

It turned out my fears were well-founded -- I got sick myself in the middle of the night. I carefully sipped sports drink to stay hydrated with enough calories and electrolytes, and by the morning I felt better, but I was still in no shape to actually ski, so we all ended up staying in the condo instead of skiing.

By the middle of the day I felt well enough to take a trip to Target to pick up some snacks, frozen pizza for supper, and a movie to watch (I picked Coraline), and dropped by Qdoba on my way back for lunch. Calvin appreciated lunch, but did not appreciate the movie -- I had to concede it was fairly creepy for him, with the Other Mother and her web of lies and traps.

We left the condo Sunday morning and dropped by Sunshine Cafe in Silverthorne, which had only a short wait for breakfast and served great vegetarian breakfast food (though I couldn't help but wish their coffee selection was wider than "coffee"). Leaving Sunday morning to drive east on I-70 back to Denver meant we beat most of the Sunday evening traffic.

I spent Monday packing and getting ready for my trip to China, leaving on Tuesday, after a quick week-long stay at home in Colorado in between two big international trips.