Copper Mountain (Day 1 of 6)

Before school - the bags are packed and staged for loading

Checked out of school early and heading to the airport

Adam watches Derek play a game while waiting at the airport gate for our flight

Me and all our carry-ons

Derek and Adam watch a movie on the plane

In Denver after getting off the plane

Thursday February 11, 2010

Last Thursday we headed out to Copper Mountain, Colorado for a ski trip. We had scheduled the trip over the President's Day weekend because Helen and the kids were supposed to be out of school, but flooding and snow caused Friday and Monday to become makeup days. Helen and Derek (now that he's older) wanted to minimize the amount of school missed. When it turned out that they had to miss school anyway, I couldn't help but point out that we could have gone on a less expensive non-holiday weekend to begin with.

I got the suitcases down from the attic the previous weekend and we packed a little each day. Our flight wasn't until 6 pm, but I took the full day off anyway because past experience has shown that it takes us much longer to get ready than it should. Even though most of the clothing was packed, it still took me a while to finalize the packing of the toiletries, electronics, games, books, snacks, etc.

Helen came home a little early and I checked the boys out of school around 2:00. We told Derek that we would be checking him out around 2:00 so he was a little frantic that they didn't call for him until almost 10 minutes after 2:00. Adam and Derek had huge grins on their faces as they approached the school office where I was waiting for them. Getting checked out of school any time is good, but getting checked out for a big trip is just the best!

The drive to the airport was pretty quick. I cut it a little close trying to get over from the I-75/85 carpool lane to the I-85 split, but I didn't have to jump the drain\ramp in the divider like I did one year on the way to the beach. We laugh about that every time we head that way. Helen says that I drive her van like a sports car and I say that's the way it wants to be driven.

We made it to the airport gate with some time to spare, which is unusual for us. The flight was packed but went well. I downloaded the season 1 & 2 recap of the tv show Lost onto my iPod. I've seen Lost a few times, but don't really keep up with it. Helen saw me watching it and persuaded me to share an earphone and let her watch along. I downloaded the other season recaps, but we never got around to watching them.

I also brought along, Second Foundation, the third book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. I'm finishing it up now and think it's the best of the three. I find books with large sweeping scopes that take place over hundreds or thousands of years and cover sweeping changes in politics, religion, etc - very interesting. I always come away realizing how insignificant most things really are. We and our problems are just an infinitesimal blip (or less) in time.

The rental car pickup was kind of a pain. You have to take a bus from the airport to the rental car lot. And we always hate the tipping situations - should we tip? how much? - especially when you can easily do the job yourself. Helen always says, "nobody tips me." The process was a little squishy. A guy pointed to a row of cars and told us to pick out any car in the row. We picked one and headed out of the lot. When we reached the checkout station the worker informed us that the car had a recall notice and that we would have to wait for them to bring us another car. The car was an upgrade, which was nice, but we still had to unload and reload all our stuff.

The flight to Denver is about 1400 miles and took about 3 hours. We arrived about 7:15 Denver time. The drive from Denver to Copper Mountain is about 75 miles and took about 2 hours along I-70. The roads were clear, but we still worried about black ice with all the inclines\declines along the way. We stopped in a little town called Frisco, outside of Copper, for groceries and then at the Copper Mountain Resort rental office to pick up the keys to our condo in Passage Point. By the time we got to our condo it was after 11:00 Colorado time - 1:00 am Atlanta time. We were pooped! It really is a lot to pull off a ski trip, especially with kids.