bugs.

not as in the small creepy-crawly kind

more of the stomach kind that makes you feel like you’re going to die for a good 24-36 hours

and also in the “I went skiing and now I can’t stop thinking about when I’m going to get out again” kind.

The latter came first. As you all know, I headed up to wolf creek after our little moab adventure on thanksgiving. After our little stint in durango for the evening, we rolled into wolf creek and did a bit of skiing.

Turns out that wolf creek was, in fact, 100% open.

Well, all the lifts were running, and all the groomers had some nice corduroy on them, but the off-piste runs (which is really the reason to go to wolf creek) were a little boney still. Nonetheless, I decided it was time to practice putting my twin tip skis to good use, and got fairly good at pulling 180s and skiing switch. I even nailed a couple tele-helis and generally had a good time.

Since I tend to forget to take pictures while I’m skiing, I handed over the camera to Dee, who took some nice shots, although most of them tended to be of me laying in the snow.

I like to tell people that I lay in the snow a lot because I used to snowboard and they’re always sitting in the snow. Really, though, I just like laying the the snow, plain and simple.

You know what I also like doing?

Drinking beer.

I have no idea what ‘apres ski’ means, except it involves massive amounts of alcohol consumption, so I’m just gonna assume that this is what’s going on in that picture.

Saturday night brought us about 3 inches of new snow, which was nice to freshen everything up on sunday. Unfortunately, my shenanigans seemed to have had an ill effect on the ski-binding interface, and I proceeded to rip a couple of the mounting screws out of my nice (not so) new skis.

So, in an attempt to salvage the rest of the day (this tragedy happened right before lunch), I decided to convert to knuckle-dragging mode and throw down 25 bux for a snowboard rental.

The 7 years of snowboarding that lurk in my past came back in about 30 seconds, and I proceeded to keep hucking off anything I could find on the rented mule snowboard I was now riding.

Like I said, the day was salvaged (was there ever a doubt?) and we enjoyed the bit of fresh, and then enjoyed a little more apres-ing.

We rolled out of wolf creek sunday night, and headed back towards flag. Unfortunately, the stomach bug I had alluded to hit J-money full-force right about the time we hit Kayenta. The last 2+ hours of the drive quickly turned into a 3+ hour drive with frequent stomach purging stops.

It was an ugly situation.

Which Claire repeated sunday night.

and I repeated monday night.

In case you missed the twitter update on tuesday, it was the first day I’ve missed work for being sick in somewhere around 3 years. It was ugly. Cold sweats, uncontrolled shivering, aching body, no appetite.

The whole nine yards.

Fortunately, it passed quickly and I’m back on the horse now.

Well, maybe not a horse (vile creatures) but definitely a bike.

The plan this weekend is to entertain some relatives, install some windows, and go for a couple nice shreds. Should be nice before the (supposed) weather rolls in monday and tuesday.

Just to keep you in the mood, Shawn asked me to post a pic of him “hucking the huuuuuuge booter”

I can’t say it was really a “huuuuuuge booter” and I can’t say it was the greatest pic, but lets just call it artistic and leave it at that.

There you go Shawn, that’s what I got.

I’ll catch you all on the flip side.