It took a long time

So, Marion and I went up to Frisco yesterday to do some X-C skiing. It was beautiful up there, even if the weather wasn’t the best. Most of the time, it was snowing, quite heavily at times. A couple of times, I stopped on the trail, just to watch the snow come down. The temperature was right at freezing, and all the snow was powder. Unfortunately.

Powder is great if you’ve got enough speed going. I have neither the knees nor the money for downhill skiing anymore. The problem was that the snow would clump under our skis and stick to them and the trail beneath them, which meant that we didn’t get much “glide” as we went along. Often, we’d push a ski and have it jolt our leg to a stop, which started to cause me problems later on.

The roughly 7km “Frisco Bay” trail normally takes us a little over an hour. Yesterday, it took just over two. We haven’t gone on the “RJ’s Vista” trail for the past few years, so I can’t say how long I would have expected it to take. I can say that it took us an hour. Well, it took me an hour. My skis were letting me do a bit better than Marion’s let her do; I suspect it’s the fact that I weigh almost twice what she does that let me strip the snow from the bottoms of my skis more easily.

That, and the fact that she missed the turnoff for the lodge and ended up on a black trail.

In any case, we normally try to leave by about 2:30pm to try and miss the Sunday evening traffic going back to Denver. Yesterday, we left around 4pm, so we hit the traffic. Big time.

I think it’s about 8 miles from Silverthorne to the Johnson Tunnel (the westbound tunnel is the Eisenhower, the eastbound is the Johnson). Yesterday, it took us about an hour and a quarter to cover that distance. Once we got to the tunnel, traffic sped up … until we got to Silver Plume. By the time we got to Georgetown, we figured it was best to get off the highway for awhile, so we went looking for a restaurant for dinner. We found the Euro Cafe before we got to the main drag, and decided to give it a try.

It was a good choice. We both had the Hungarian Goulash, and it was wonderful, as was the sweet-and-sour red cabbage. I tried the apple strudel for dessert (I’d just done 3 hours of cardio, remember?), and it was tasty enough, but I don’t think I’d have it again. I’d definitely go back for the goulash, though. Maybe try some of their other dishes. They also had a nice touch in the restrooms that I haven’t seen before… disposable cups and a bottle of Scope. I like that.

After spending almost an hour at dinner, we got back onto the highway. Traffic was moving about 20 mph. We finally got home at 8:30pm, for a trip that normally takes between about 90 and 150 minutes. Bleah. We’ll remember that next time, I’m sure.

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