Aspen Again

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Ah back in Aspen where they had 25 cm of snow 24 hrs ago and more due tonight, tomorrow is linig up to be another great day. Amazing how quickly your skiing improves on good snow and long runs.

Montrose turned out to be quite a good choice, the house I booked turned out to be a house that had been built pre GFC and was huge, even had its own temperature controlled wine storage room. We took a guided tour of Telluride with Jay, who turned out to be an excellent chap so we invited him and his wife to the house for apres. He lives within walking distance of the house and gave us some background.

Turns out some investors from Las Vegas bought up a tract of land, got Jack Nicholaus to design a Golf course and then built some spec houses to seed the development. Then Bang! along comes the GFC, they go belly up and everything is sold off to the highest bidder. The house originally valued at over 1.5 mil sold for around $270k. works for me!

So three nights in Montrose and then the drive to here. On the way out of Montrose we passed a stunning example of America today. There was a Salvation Army Thrift shop, second hand furniture and an area set aside to sell pre owned guns, welcome to America!

The road from Montrose to Aspen crosses a 8,500 ft pass on a mining route, apparently they've been digging coal out of these frozen mountains for over 150 years.

So here we are in Aspen and we can stick in one place for a few days. The kiwis have arrived looking like a wrung out pensioner outing but after the best part of 24 hrs without sleep who can blame them for that. All that will change as soon as they put on skis of course but for at least a day or so I'll be the one feeling like I can keep up.

For now we are about to be invaded byvowel stranglers due to our status as the least jet lagged of the group, it could get ugly.

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