Hello from the land of little crystallized water molecules that form high in the atmosphere, and fall on us high country folks in what we like to call snow. In a week, we have gone from balmy breezes to winter. I snowboarded last week for the first time. It was wonderful. Maybe the snow wasn't so great, and maybe it was just several runs down the "ribbon", but feeling the snow under my board is something I have missed all summer. It seemed like I was really kickin' tail, until I remembered that I had my edges sharpened before going up. No wonder I was actually able to carve out some turns. By the end of last year, my edges were actually round. Nary a turn could I make without having my board slide out from under me unless i was in enough fluff that dull edges did not make a difference. There was a day or two at the end of last season, I was beginning to doubt my abilities to even stay vertical. Doubt no more my friends. I am back. Back to the days of driving while pearing around the goggles hanging from my rear view mirror. Back to carrying my snowboard strapped to the rollbar of the jeep. Back to muddy boots in a box behind my seat. Fresh gray tape on my mittens. I love those gloves. They have a five-fingered liner snuggled inside roomy, yet flexible mittens. I found them between two couch cushions in a condo one year after a whole buss load of kids from the University of Austin had gone. They were almost new back then. Now, the right one has carried the knife-sharp edge of my snowboard through so many parking lots, the palm has worn thin, and finally shredded. It is through this inevitable fact that I achieve identification as a true local. The finger end of my right mitten has been wrapped round and round with duct tape to ensure that it remains waterproof. The guy who invented gray tape aught to be made an honorary shredder.

There are several reasons that mittens are a good choice for snowboarders. One, they do not carry anything, have no need for fingers except for strapping in, and that can usually be done without much dexterity. One can curl one's fingers up and keep them much warmer. And the last reason is a somewhat discriminatory one. There can be no obscene gestures toward anyone encountered on the slopes. Well, there can be, but no one will know it for sure.

Actually, that is just the reputation that snowboarders have. Disregard for the rules, dangerous, fast, rude, uncommunicative. Mostly because of the earbuds jammed against their eardrums. Not necessarily true. Maybe on a micro scale, just as many skiers can fit that same description. Mostly, they are an aggressive, flirtatious bunch. I slide my gloves off sometimes in a gondola cabin, when the testosterone gets too thick. The sparkle on my left hand is enough to turn aggressive into painfully polite. But while snowboarders own the space around them, many skiers can be equally unpleasant. These are the old-school snobs who look down on anything less than the purity of the sport. Who spend the entire ride up the chair huffing about how someone followed them through their powder stash, and who slam the bar down on my unsuspecting head, impaling my thigh, with nary a warning. But then there are those wonderful people in both sports. It is a real pleasure sometimes to just get out, on a bluebird day, and go spend the morning with people who are exactly where they want to be. Even the most grouchy old codgers can be coaxed into being jovial on such a day.

In the meantime, we work. I know, some of you thought that notion was foreign to us. We have been rearranging the office for the last week. Some of you who have spent time in the claustrophobic aisle between shelves that all of our laundry is stored in and all of our bags of clean linens are packed in know how tight and nonfunctional it was in there. And we have grown into a big enough company that often, two cleaning crews are trying to pack for their day at the same time. We opened it up, and rearranged it so that two crews could pack without climbing over each other. While we were doing that, we also went through our linens and threw away a couple hundred sheet sets that were getting too ripped or stained for our guests to use. We haven't broken that fact to the owner yet. He's going to be paying several thousand dollars this year for new linens. Now's when it's nice to just be an employee.

To add to the sudden frenzy, Keystone resorts has stopped providing card keys for our units. We used to order hundreds of dollars worth of keys from them, already programmed for the doors they opened. But the other day, we got a tactful letter from them saying they would no longer be providing this service. This means several thousand dollars worth of new equipment to be able to make all of our own keys, as well as a week's training seminar in Las Vegas, or else we will find ourselves indefinitely locked out as of November first. Hmmm... couldn't be all bad. No getting into units might make work fairly impossible, and we could spend a week in Vegas. I have never even seen the inside of a casino, except on our honeymoon, when I was sicker than a dog and crawled from our hotel to a pay phone in a casino in Lake Tahoe to call my mother to check in. I seriously doubt I would even be able to gamble. It is something that genuinely scares me. I lost a ten dollar bill to a Mexican restaurant once, when they gave me the wrong change, and that was so distressing I called them as soon as I noticed it missing. It was just unthinkable that I had paid twenty dollars for a black bean and shredded pork burrito. What if i just fed ten dollars to a slot machine and it swallowed it whole and laughed at me? That would haunt me every time I went shopping, and something cost ten dollars more than I was willing to pay for it.

But still, the lights of Las Vegas is something I have never seen. And nothing is more needed more after a vacation than another vacation...

The boys are all involved in watching the Indians and the Red Sox battle it out on the ball field for a chance at playing the Rockies in the World Series. It seems we picked a good year to become baseball fans. We went to a game at Coors field this summer, and have been following the Rockies in their 21 out of 22 game winning streak. We shouted advice at the tiny players on the TV screen as they were one pitch away from losing their shot at the post season in their wild card game against the Padres, and celebrated with them when they finally won it in the 13th inning...and kept waiting for them to lose (this is our Rockies we are talking about, after all) and gained faith in them as they gained momentum and swept the Phillies and the Diamondbacks, and finally, it sunk in- the World Series will be played in Denver. Denver! Nobody expected that one. Of course, the downside is, tickets we are used to paying four dollars apiece for will now be selling for four hundred apiece . No sliding into the Rockpile bleachers on a ticket that costs less than your hot dog during these games. I imagine we will be not going, even if the World Series in Denver is not something you see all the time, to say the very least.

And behind my laptop screen, the Bosox just won the game. Looks like it will be them and Denver. Good. Now I can finally go to bed. Goodnight to all.

A sunny “hola” to my peoples who are waiting for a trip report. I am in the land of no internet access, so my report shall have to wait to be posted until I get home, but that does not mean I have to wait to write it. Thank goodness for copy and paste.

At the moment, I am seated four floors above a cascading pool that must cover half an acre, fountains and falls making almost enough noise to cover the sounds of all the conversations in English being held pool-side. Juice Newton is pleading to be called Angel of the Morning, from speakers camouflaged in realistic plastic rocks under the palms. Americanized ambiance. No mariachi here. Nothing ethnic shall pass beyond the low stone wall separating the resort from the plebian beach beyond. The staff speaks English. Advertisements for the spa, restaurants, and gym show healthy, smiling blonde-haired, blue-eyed vacationers being massaged and pampered by equally light-skinned professionals. If one yearns for authenticity and local flavor, one would do well to avoid large resorts. But it was for this reason we rented a car. We can have a four-star resort setting, staff hovering, pool inviting… but we can leave the Zona Touristimo and opt for pocked highways through the jungle, crowded, unpaved streets, roving vendors nearly hurling themselves and their wares in our direction. I am delighted by the crowds. I am a master at “no…gracias”, and leaving mid sentence. Cracked, weathered adobe in flamboyant colors, cracked, weathered faces that bear the mark of a life spent in ownership of little more than self-respect. When minimum wage earners make five dollars a day U.S., the wealth of vacationers must be staggering. Mr. B, on the other hand, feels a bit obligated, and in the interest of preserving our few remaining pesos, wishes to stay away from any vendors hawking pareos, jewelry, serapes, sunglasses, henna tattoos, a hammock for an day… he tells me to roll up my window as we drive through out of the way villages so nobody has a chance to throw a menu in the car, making us have to stop and give it back.

It is an accommodating patio deck that I sit on. The same marble flooring as the inside of the condo, lights, a ceiling fan. Potted plants, table and chairs, lounge chairs. The pool below ends a few feet above the Bahia de Banderas, thirty feet of sand separating it from the gentle surf. Palms and bougainvilleas grow out of islands in the pool, lounge chairs sit in a few inches of water. We spent two full days just enjoying all the resort had to offer. Now, we hurt from making use of the fitness center after a summer without the Silverthorne Rec center. We have mild sunburns from a combination of books and pool. Bobby even finished a book. Bless him, that happens about as often as Halley’s comet. Not to infer that I married a nitwit who is not literarily inclined, but the man simply works too much to be able to take in more than an occasional movie.

We drove north today, to the tiny village of Punta Mita. The Puerto Vallarta beaches seem a little dirty, littered with driftwood splinters and trash left behind by the tide. The water seems muddy, as well. It is a bathwater-warm 90 degrees or so, and people do swim in it, but compared to the crystal blue-green water of Hawaii last spring, or South Padre Island last fall, it is rather murky up-close. But not so at Punta Mita. We found the beach by losing ourselves on the narrow, stone streets of the village. Deserted surf and dive shops and fishing tours manned by locals resembling in nature, eager golden retrievers. They saw us coming a mile away, and stood ready with their silver, their menus, something, anything they could offer us. At last, we found ourselves high above a strip of sand, a mile long, nearly deserted. A young couple and their naked baby. A few locals and their silver. A few surfers and boogie-boarders. And us without our swimsuits, when we finally found the packed white sand and crystal water we were looking for. The beach is so gently sloped that the foam from breaking surf carries itself thirty feet up onto the beach before it is finally swallowed by the sand. It is a beach made for jogging. Framed by the Sierra Madres, closer to the mouth of the Bay of Banderas where the water circulation does not encourage the muddy water of Puerto Vallarta and Nuevo Vallarta, we wondered why there was not the explosion of resorts that there are further south. Then we remembered that many people do not rent cars, and a taxi that far out would probably cost fifty dollars U.S. But we made a mental note to look for a bungalow there, the next time we come. In all of our exploring, it was the highlight find of our trip. Now that we know what to expect from local traffic, if we return, we will rent a car again. We are just too spoiled by our long-distance American lifestyle.

The guide books told us to expect stone streets in the villages. They were not joking. Not just stones, but river rocks. Rough as a cob. The water collects between them from afternoon showers, keeping the streets constantly wet. We had also heard mixed reports of the ease, or horrors of driving in Mexico, depending on who was telling the story. Other than having to get used to turning lanes defying all logic by being on the right side of the road, actually frontage roads separate from the road itself, accommodating both right and left hand turns, it seems less stressful than driving in Denver. Turn signals are deemed a sign of weakness, and merging is always happening around you, busses are always stopping, and two lane roads get turned into three lanes on the whims of drivers. Painted medians are a legitimate part of the roadway, it seems. If drivers drove in Denver with such utter disregard to traffic laws, some uptight citizen would call it in to law enforcement. There would be road rage. Fingers would flip obscene gestures. Not so here. Here, one can drive like a tourist, and nobody will notice. It is actually kind of nice. No need to learn about traffic laws in a foreign country, because if one did attempt to observe them, they would risk impeding the flow.

And there are the delights of cultural differences only hinted at by the Hispanics who live in the States, who have brought as much of their culture as possible with them. Much of it, I can relate to, because they are just things that happen in rural, un-covenant protected areas. Three fifteen foot aluminum ladders, lashed to the roof of a battered VW Bug. A dozen kids in the back of a pickup truck. Pizza delivery on dirt bikes.

We were also warned that it seemed impossible to get through a whole vacation in Mexico without getting sick. I was expecting it to be the stomache-ache, parasite variety. Instead, it is all in my head- literally. It feels like a balloon. My sinuses are on strike, my throat is producing gunk, my eyes burn. It seems the most memorable souvenir I will take home is a cold.

We are cheap. We rented a condo, because of it’s kitchen. We have eaten for five days on $600 pesos, about five dollars per meal. Still more than we had hoped to spend, mostly because we overestimated our appetites. For the last two days, we have been eating more than normal, so that we do not have to admit we bought twice as much food as we actually needed. We even bought Coconut rum and various fruit juices, and the blender in our condo has been whipping up some mean, frothy concoctions. There can be many variations of the traditional pina colada when one has on hand mango juice, milk, peach yogurt, coconut juice, and pineapple juice. They are guilt free, because we are on vacation and we are not paying $7.00 U.S. apiece for them, as we would poolside. The housekeepers are determined to tempt us with the well-stocked honor bar. The contents change daily. If we do not touch the beer, they leave soda. If the soda is still there, they leave us Snapple. When we did not touch the potato chips, chocolate was left. We refuse to touch it, cheap as we are. It must frustrate them. Someone willing to pay to fly here, to rent a condo, and then too cheap to buy everything the resort has to offer.

I am surprised to realize how many Spanish words have roots that correlate to English root words. I have not studied Spanish a lot, but I find it amazingly easy to navigate street signs and billboards. Ideally, I wish I could come to Mexico to learn Spanish. It would be much simpler if one were immersed in it, I can see, than it is to learn it from a textbook in a classroom. Of course, reading it and hearing it spoken are two separate things. I am lost in the staccato barrage of words when addressed in Spanish.

All in all, Bobby says he liked Hawaii better. There was more to do, the beaches were better. I am not convinced. Resort aside, Mexico seems much more authentic, and much less hostile. I get the feeling that if I knew the language, I would not be just another rich white tourist. These people would embrace me into their lives and culture. Hawaiians strike me as being too wrapped up in the loss of their supremacy, too immersed in their politics, to involved in their little island micro-culture, and too overwhelmed by the constant flow of tourism to be able to appreciate those who spend their dollars on what they have to offer in order to support their living there. Mexicans, on the other hand, recognize the american dollar as a life-force, something to be respected. Maybe the American people, in their eyes, are a lazy, overpriviledged bunch, but there is no denying the power of their money on the lives of the locals and their families. If only Summit County could look at it that way.

…And now we are home. It has taken me three days to even be able to sit down with my computer enough to post this, because we have had to hit the ground running. Well, we did take one day off after we got home, and spent it collecting B’s toys. Oh, yes, did I mention…? So one day three weeks ago, I spend the day in the house, doing wifely little duties. Nary a word from BBD. Finally, at seven o’clock, I call him, wondering if he would be making an appearance for dinner. He grows a bit sheepish as he tells me, “Sorry, I kinda need to work, since I didn’t work all day.” And what did he do all day, I ask him. “I went to Buena Vista and bought a snowmobile… are you mad?”

For the record, the wife wasn’t mad that he bought a snowmobile. Rather glad because for the first time, Mr. B has reason to look forward to winter. Finally, he can enjoy the mountains after the weather forces him to wear more than shirtsleeves. (He doesn’t necessarily share my manic love affair with frozen ice crystals and waxed fiberglass over a wood core.) But yes, the wife was still a bit “mad” because he had taken a road trip, through the turning aspens, through such essential, picturesque Colorado without her. Without even inviting her. He tried to make it better by explaining to her that the sled he bought was such an amazing bargain, and that it was small, just her size, and honey, it even has hand warmers! And he was only trying to spare her and her lingering ADD the boredom of sitting in a dealership for two hours while he haggled. And that if she would just tell him how long his leash was, he would never go farther than the specified distance from home without prior consent again. The leash was set at thirty miles, and he promised to take her with him when he went to pick the new sled up.

Four days later, his father called him from Kremmling, a little town between here and Steamboat Springs. Another bargain, a big boy sled. Pristine condition, and, oh, yes, hand warmers. This time, he cleared it with the wife. The wife thinks he may be catching on.

So the day after we got back from Mexico, we put 250 miles on his truck, chasing down his two new children. Now they are bedded in the garage, covers removed and folded, all tucked away, awaiting the first snow. Last year at this time we were buried in the stuff. This year we have only seen a few flakes. Figures, B says.