Hardly Breck a Sweat

Headed out to hit the slopes in Colorado a few weeks ago. Breckenridge to be exact. I had been there a few years back with my sister but it was during the summer and I was curious about what the town and mountain would be like during ski season. Back then, my sister and I stayed at a hostel a few blocks from the center of town and it turned out to be more of a bed and breakfast than the simple accommodations I was looking forward to. I had formed this idea of a hostel in my head and wanted to realize it by arriving to a young crowd of travelers sharing stories and experiences. A community of strangers you could say. I guess that sort of thing appeals to me. Instead, the place was very comfortable, very spacious and the party sized jacuzzi was very hot. It was a good consolation prize and a clue to the kind of clientele the town catered to. Although the aesthetic is very upscale, Breckenridge still manages to keep that old town mountain village feel mostly because it was built over an old town mountain village. I remembered checking out the people on the restaurant and coffee shop lined streets thinking it was yuppie central. Totally not my crowd, but where there are yuppies there is ease and comfort. Prefect for a no hassle ski weekend out west. And the snow usually brings out the adventurous types anyway so problem solved. Neat town, cool people, big ol hill, close to Denver International... choosing Breck was easy.

The conditions on the mountain weren't optimal and not all the runs were open the first couple days we were there but I still had a grand ol time on my skis. It's hard to say what ability of skier I am. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the advanced category and sometimes, like on the diamond glade runs up on Lift 6, it's like I'm putting skis on for the first time. Breck goes from intermediate to expert in a flash with little in between. Not all that bad for families or those into cruisers I suppose. Though I would have preferred something a bit more challenging without having to negotiate mogals and pine trees on near vertical descents. My ego is still bruised. But I'm nitpicking, there was a lot of variety and when peak 10 opened up we had our fill of great views and great all around skiing.

Breckenridge has way more upside than any downs I can think of. I'd recommend it to anyone. I wish I could go into detail about all the wonderful places to go and eat but we had fun finding them on our own so I wouldn't take that experience from you. Just talk to all the friendly people on the street and in the hotel and you'll have an easy time. I'm already looking forward to my next ski trip our west... whatever that may be.

Santa with style

A popular event during the holiday season around the DC Metro area is a Santa bar crawl, though I'm sure this sort of thing happens all over the place. The premise is simple, dress up like Santa, an elf, Christmas tree or maybe even Rudolph and head on out to your favorite bars. Since the elements of the Santa myth are a hosh posh of traditions from various religions, this outing can appeal to persons of any religious background.

I chose to class up the tired ol Santa shirt a little and reconfigure it into a Santa suit jacket. But this is still a pretty low key event so I accessorized with the Santa ball cap I made for last year's crawl. Although time intensive, the hat was pretty easy to put together. I took an old baseball hat I had laying around and covered it with the fabric from two Santa hats. An Exacto Knife with a very sharp blade made short work of the de-stitching duties. Totally necessary to maximize fabric coverage. And of course, attaching the fabric to the hat was a breeze with hot glue... what else. Now, the jacket was a completely different story. First, I bought a generic Santa costume from Party City and a swath of white fuzzy fabric along with a few buttons and some thread from Jo-Anne Crafts. I proceeded to de-stitch the whole Santa coat so I could adjust the measurements. I used one of my sport jackets for size comparison. After a little scissor work and a ton of hand sewing (and hot glue), the jacket was born. Originally I didn't attach the bottom trim thinking that it would look more like a coat than a suit jacket, but the red felt from the Santa suit is too thin to create an adequate border even when doubled over so I opted for it. I think that was the right decision.

DFL !

There's nothing wrong with being dead last if you're doing it for a good cause. Headed out a little while back for the annual SMASHED DC Scavenger Hunt. Now, with a little cross team teamwork and possibly a bit of dishonesty, we actually managed to win the thing last year. Sometimes you have to play above the rules. And winning is all well and good but we needed more of a challenge this year. That and we felt like fraternizing a little more along the course. Contrary to what you may think, coming in last is kind of hard to do. We needed to actively try to get rid of points both real and fabricated. We got a kick out of making people sing Def Leopard songs for fake points. It's the little things.

Our Team theme was "isn't it obvious". In a nutshell, we all dressed to a rhyme scheme. For instance, Cuckoo Hebrew, Haiku Guru, Blue Crew, Voodoo. You get the point. We made people guess the theme and no one did. I guess it wasn't that obvious.

Turbo Boost

I recently recreated my Knight Rider Belt for a trip out to the State Theater to see the Legwarmers. The original belt died after the party for which is was built. Not too surprising really, it was sort of a last minute thing and the construction wasn't that solid. Normally I would have called it a project and moved on but I was never really happy with the way the light diffusion worked in the original so I instituted a few new tricks and put together a far superior product.

Club 1139 Excellent Adventure

So here's what we built for our latest 80's party. If you try hard enough, I think you can guess the theme. The idea first came to me when my roommate Rhett and I were studying for our high school history final. I was kind of stressed cause if I didn't pass, my father was going to send me to a military academy. And that was a real possibility since I know nothing about most pop culture historic figures. I thought, if only there was a way to travel back in time and accidentally gather up said figures due to situationally comedic events that necessitate their coming back to the present with me just in time to help us give our history final oral presentation. Then I thought, wait... this was kinda already done in a movie and besides, everyone knows that you totally need a flux capacitor for time travel. So we axed the time travel idea and decided to build the phone booth anyway. I painted the whole inside black and mounted a couple black lights to its ceiling so party goers could write anything they wanted on the inside walls with a highlighter pen. Indecent verbiage and caricature was kept to a minimum. Best thing about the booth... it was still standing when the party was over. I don't know if that's saying more about the quality of the party or the construction of the booth. Nah, it was all booth baby!

Whitewater in West Virginia

Met my sister in West Virginia a little while back (July '08) for a little camping and white water rafting trip. Never to miss an opportunity for adventure, Debbie decided to accompany me. While it was her first time out, I had already gone once in Colorado a few years ago. A good time was had by all. However, I can say with certainty that I will be seeking a bigger class of rapids on my next outing. The 4's on the Lower New River still provided a good amount of energy but the time to really go is on the Upper Gauley River in late September when the annual fall releases from Summersville Dam create some really great drops... or so I hear. I'll have to try it for myself. Probably not this year though. It took about 5 hours to get there from DC. It's time to think about saving those road trips for ski season. It can't get here fast enough.

SMASHED Idiotarod!

Ok, the 2008 SMASHED Idiotarod was a few months back but totally worth a late post. for those who may not know, SMASHED is a DC philanthropic organization dedicated to enabling the childish side of any who wish to participate in their charitable outings. For instance, why else would we race shopping carts through the streets of downtown DC if not to let loose a little and help out a worthwhile charity like Miriam's Kitchen.

We ended up finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack but that's Ok cause it really isn't about winning for me. I just like decorating the cart and the afterparty... which was a total blast. And I think the cart turned out really well too. Thanks to Debbie Lee for thinking up a great theme. I wanted to give the cart that "puffy" look of the unmistakable 70's style TPIR sets. It was actually pretty easy to pull together with some semi-stretchy lime green fabric, medium density cotton batting and a few pieces of rigid cardboard. And of course no project is complete without hot glue and duct tape.