Aspen Trip

Nicole and I headed to Aspen/Snowmass on Friday. We left work a little early, after Nicole's group therapy that she does every Friday. I ducked out about 40 minutes before the close of the markets, but nothing too serious. Our flight was delayed out of Minneapolis for over 1 hour because of de-icing. We had dinner reservations in Aspen at 7:30 with one of my biggest/best clients and a prospect that he brought along. Once we got to Denver, we still had to catch a small plane to Aspen (about 25 minute flight). We sprinted off the flight from Mpls to the gate only to find that the plane to Aspen was delayed an hour. I asked the guy at the counter what was wrong and he said, and I quote, "The plane is broken!"
We arrived at the Aspen airport at 6:50 p.m. and we had a shuttle waiting to take us to our hotel. We tipped the guy to check us in, drop our bags off and give us a ride into Aspen for our 7:30 dinner. We arrived at 7:40 so not too bad.
We had a great dinner and evening with Steve Rooney and his wife Karen, and hopefully some new friends who live in Hudson, Mike and Tina. They both went to the U, just a few years before us (1989). Steve has been a client of mine for almost 10 years, I want to say 2002 or so. He and his wife spend 2-3 weeks in Aspen every year and they invited us out to have dinner with them. We had never been to Aspen so we took him up on the offer, especially since February has been so busy with all these seminars and everything. We deserved a little getaway, and it was a great weekend.
On Saturday we had breakfast and hit the slopes for as many runs as we could fit into a day. We covered nearly the whole mountain (no black diamonds for Nicole and I). They had 8 fresh inches of snow on Thursday night so the snow on Saturday was still very good, and it was about 35 degrees. We skiied with our interior jackets and it was very comfortable. I didn't even need goggles, just sunglasses, perfect weather. For Apres Ski (french for after skiing) we hit Sneaky's Tavern and had a blast. My wife drank Moscow Mule's (look it up) and I drank Colorado Beer, always good. I drank Ranger IPA which is a hoppy beer from Fort Collin's New Belgium Brewery, always great beer from this brewery.
Dinner after a little nap and a shower was at The Viceroy (http://www.viceroyhotelsandresorts.com/), a brand new swanky hotel which was right up our alley. We love comtemporary and this place was exactly that. They had a fireplace in the lounge just like the one in our basement, only about 4 times longer. We sipped on cocktails and wine for about 2 hours before dinner. Now, here is where it got good. We were seated for dinner at 9:30 p.m. We ordered a half bottle of a great red wine, Faust and looked over the menu. It was VERY EXPENSIVE, like more expensive than Manny's in Minneapolis, and that is ridiculous. So, I set a record for the most expensive hamburger ever consumed (at least for me). This reminded me of a trip I took in high school with church to Atlanta, GA. I was 15 or 16 yrs old and we had a cheeseburger for $6.00 and that was very expensive back then. Then I went to college and burgers were $8 or $9 and that was even more expensive. Then after college I found Ike's in downtown Mpls which has great burgers and they are $14 or $15, getting ridiculous now. So, this burger was $29. Cheapest thing on the menu. It was amazing, but seriously, $29 for a hamburger, give a brother a break.
Sunday we ate breakfast (free buffet at the hotel was pretty good). We hit the slopes hard again, snow was a little worse, but still pretty good. We quit a little early so we could spend some time in Aspen. We stayed in the Snowmass Village, which is 10 miles away. We hadn't been there since dinner on Friday night so we wanted to see it during the day. We hit the Gondola at Aspen (Ajax Mt) and it was very different terrain than Snowmass. Snowmass is very similar to Vail, very mild terrain, but very good, and very family friendly. Very different than Jackson Hole, which I thought was very difficult terrain, not much for Nicole to ski on. She always felt uncomfortable and beyond her ability on many hills in Jackson (very steep), while Snowmass has over 50% of its terrain for level 2 skiers (right up our alley). 12% is for advanced skiers and we didn't even get to those hills. Aspen was very similar to Jackson, very steep. We saw Buttermilk Mt (home of the X Games) on the way to Aspen, and there is another mountain called The Highlands. Your lift pass is good at any of the 4 mountains. If we were there more than 2 days we would try the other 3, but we took 2 days to cover all of Snowmass, it was huge.
Aspen is ritzy, tons of restaurants and shops, very cool. We grabbed Apres Ski here as well. We enjoyed about an hour or so talking to Ron Bill, this was the guys' name. He was alone skiing and didn't have a place to sit so he asked if he could join us. We obliged and he talked our ears off for over an hour. He was interesting and told us all about skiing in Europe, particularly Austria. He was from England but spent a lot of time in New York and 16 days every year skiing in Aspen. He was at least 70 yrs old and was planning on skiing everyday.
After we left Ron we went to the Hyatt Grand Aspen to their wine bar called The Grape Bar. Nicole picked a nice bottle of wine(Duckhorn) and we sat on a couch by the fireplace. Dinner was next at Ellina, a trendy italian place. Admittedly we ordered another bottle of wine (Vietti Nebbiolo) and shared a great dinner. We werent driving so our last day in Aspen was a wine drinking relaxing day.
Monday morning we were up early and off to the airport. Great trip.