Snowmass

Wow. We did so much last week and had such an awesome time, it's hard to know where to begin. 

I was fortunate enough to attend the Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass, Colorado. Veterans with various disabilities from blindness to paraplegics to MS to PTSD to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) to, well, people like me, converged from across the US to ski or snowboard with expert coaches and adaptive equipment.

First, let me discuss the weather. Typically, at the end of ski season in late March/early April, the higher elevations of Colorado are starting to warm up. The snow conditions turn slushy. At last year's clinic, I could snowboard comfortably in my T-shirt. This year though? It snowed Monday through Thursday. They said it was the best it's been on the mountain in years. I could not have asked for more perfect Colorado weather.

What did I pack? We (Betsy, Grace and I; we pulled Grace out of school for a week) had one large bag for all our winter clothes and a large suitcase for all the rest of the clothes, swimsuits (the hotel has a hot tub, ok?), and toiletries we'd need for seven nights away. Plus, I had my hard suitcase for my Blendtec (with Wildside jar), syringe holders, extra syringes, a couple Real Food Blends, and a whole bunch of hand-towels for me to drool on all week. The hand-towels helped to cushion the blender to (hopefully) prevent damage during the flight.

Note the salmon Real Food Blends, the huge stack of towels and the Blendtec with Wildside jar

 Also, I had my portable suction machine as my carry-on. It takes quite a bit of luggage for drool maintenance--about 25 towels and the suction machine. Forget about food; if I could just swallow my spit, I'd be a happy man. Have I said that before? I'm sure you'll hear it again. Drooling constantly is a real pain. In the side pockets of my suction machine bag, I had my medications and a book. Betsy had her purse and another carry-on with things to keep Grace entertained through the journey to Aspen. 

Grace was a little crazy on the flight. I acted like I didn't know her.

The Winter Sports Clinic has a special deal with United Airlines, where they fly all the veterans direct from the nearest airport to Aspen for a set rate. They also had TSA agents help each veteran through security and straight to their gate. The airports and TSA really bent over backward for us and could not have made the trip there any easier. We were scheduled for a very short layover (30 minutes) in Houston before boarding our flight to Aspen, but it ended up being much longer because there were so many wheelchair-bound veterans that needed to be escorted on the plane. We didn't mind the wait at all.

Continuing the tradition of always drinking Ginger Ale on planes

Once we arrived in Aspen all the veterans were ushered onto a bus and driven to our hotels, the Westin Resort and the Wildwood Hotel. They are located on the slopes, right in Snowmass Village. We immediately settled into our hotel room, which looked like this:

No. Grace isn't asleep. I wish she was. But she's not. Still bouncing off the walls. I got up soooooo early.

We were hungry, so we decided to take a little walk down to the Village and find something to eat. The first place we found was called The Stew Pot. They had a tiny little kitchen, so I was a little leery about asking them to blend up my meal, but they didn't bat an eye. They advertised a bowl of old fashioned beef stew that was gluten free, so that's what I ordered. Note: if you ask a restaurant to blend up your meal and bring it out to you, make sure to specify that they should bring it out in the pitcher. Otherwise, they try to get fancy and bring it out in a gigantic bowl. Anyway, we cleared that up and I had my stew, which really hit the spot.

Thanks for the excellent meal, Stew Pot!!!!!

We got back to our rooms and crashed. It had been an exhausting trip and we were still getting acclimated to being at over 9,500 ft elevation. That was Saturday.

Sunday morning, we ordered breakfast in our rooms. I was in the shower when they brought it in, but apparently Betsy and Grace made an impression because later in the week, the same maid who brought our breakfast left us a gift basket with a note saying how inspiring we were. The Westin Resort is so awesome to veterans every year.

After breakfast, we registered at the clinic for the week, got our meal tickets, team assignments, upcoming schedule, and took Grace to get her registered for ski school. As we were getting on the gondola down to ski school, the lift operator exclaimed, "that's Adam Sandler walking away over there!!" I could just barely see the back of him as he walked away. I thought he was probably busy and wouldn't want to be bothered by the likes of me, but Betsy convinced me to chase after him. We stalked him, I shook his hand, and got my picture with him. I know a lot of Mr. Sandler's recent movies haven't been the greatest, but Happy Gilmore is still one of my all-time favorites. So this was a big moment for me. I could tell he was every bit as excited as I was:

He was so busy on the phone, he didn't know I was there

"It's like a carousel. You put the quarter in. It goes up and down...and around"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAs2PBL1RsA

The Winter Sports Clinic gave us vouchers to get our meals at Taste of Snowmass Sunday afternoon. For Taste of Snowmass, every restaurant in the village set up a table outside and we were able to pick a meal to eat while socializing with all the other vets. There were a lot of different meals to choose from. I got steak with broccoli and a flourless chocolate tort. I brought my meal back to our room to blend up and eat.

"Mmmmmmmm...chocolate tort..."

The thing I hate about eating my meal in my hotel room is cleaning the blender pitcher. Usually, when I'm eating out at a restaurant,  I ask them to run the pitcher through their dishwasher. This way I'm certain that's it's completely clean and I can immediately put it back in the suitcase. However, in the hotel room I have to improvise and clean the pitcher in the bathtub (won't fit in the sink). I always forget to bring a small bottle of dish soap with me, so I had to clean the pitcher with the hotel-supplied soap. I never feel like I've gotten it completely clean in the bathtub.

After eating, Grace and Betsy tried out the hot tub. You can't tell from the picture but it was snowing while they were out there. Their clothes got all wet and they were freezing cold on the walk from the tub to our room (poor babies, right?). I told Grace that it would be really fun to run out of the hot tub, make a snow angel, then jump back in the water. But Betsy quashed that idea--thanks a lot, MOM!

Nothing better than being scalding hot under water and freezing cold out of it

It looks like this post is going to be extremely long, so I'll have to be that guy and give you a "To be continued..." Sorry about that, but tune in a few days from now for our continuing adventures!!!