Travel to the Rockies

Today I traveled to Aspen for a few days with family and their long-standing skiing companions. This time out, my trip was more complicated by the fact that I decided to ride as well as ski.

I sent my skis and ski boots ahead of time via FedEx Ground service. It was a smart move, I think. It costs less to ship both items, together, than it would have cost to take just one of them as a piece of excess baggage.

There was a scare for a few minutes this morning, when I looked on the FedEx web site. It looked like my skis would arrive today, but not my boots. Tomorrow is a Saturday, so I would not have my boots for another two days! But a quick call to the 800 number brought me relief: both items were on their way. The web site had not been updated. Sure enough, once I arrived at the hotel, both packages were waiting for me. It was sure nice to not have to carry my ski boot bag as a carry-on item, like last year. Carrying 15 pounds through the airport can get tiring very quickly.

All the snowboarding gear fit into one large bag. That’s one advantage of riding with soft boots: they are light enough and small enough that they easily fit into the bag, along with the board, my goggles, snowboarding gloves, knee pads, and impact shorts. Compared with skiing, though, there is more to take (shorts, pads, and special gloves.)

It took me a couple of hours to unpack everything. To fit the board into bag, I had to partially take apart my bindings, which meant that I had to reassemble them in the hotel room. It’s hard to describe what this was like, so I won’t. If you have seen Flow bindings, you will know what I’m talking about.

Getting a good night’s sleep that first night in the mountains is always hard. It was compounded by the fact that I had to sleep on the couch for the first night. But thanks to some sleeping pills, I got 6 to 7 hours of sleep, which is actually good for a first night.