Shaking the Snowglobe

I was sad to leave Taos this morning, but what an amazing ~six days, they completely flew by. We had a pretty relaxing night of burgers and watching Wedding Crashers, which I forgot is hilarious. Vince Vaughn kind of carries that whole movie, even though it has Christopher Walken, Bradley Cooper, Owen Wilson, Rachel Mccadams….he just blows everyone away. Much like I was blown away when I stopped by The Great Sand Dunes National Park on my way to Frisco, Colorado. I saw a sign for it while on the highway, a roughly 20 mile detour, and figured that I was in no rush and should definitely go check out the tallest dunes in North America. From afar, the dunes look like a small pile of dirt sitting at the foot of the Rockies, but as you get closer and the immensity of the background mountains becomes clear, so does that grandiosity of the dunes.

Stepping onto the sandy hills, there are no actual paths or trails and visitors are encouraged to “take themselves where their curiosity leads”. I wandered upwards for a while, feeling transported to some desert planet like Tatooine. This was a perfect addition to the already wild and diverse scenery that I’ve experienced this trip. Tempted to hike all the way to the top of the dunes where trekkers looked like tiny ants, I was thwarted by some left butt cheek pain. This has been a lot of skiing and hiking, and the terrain in Taos was not quite as soft as in Alta, which despite being super fun probably means it was a bit harder on my body. A bit of rest is in order. After the dunes I headed straight to A-Basin, where Nick was wrapping up a ski day with his dad, Mike. Agile as ever, I arrived just as they wrapped up and drove us all back to Frisco. This house is awesome and I am excited to spend the week here. It’s bright and loud with banter (Much shtick was given to Nick’s sister who consistently dropped her glass topo Chico bottle….which reminds me of another certain sister who has a habit of dropping her massive hydro flask).

Nick and I played some foosball – I lost the first 2/3 matchup and immediately suggested we run the series back again. I came out on top the next couple of rounds and plan to hold onto the belt for as long as I can. After a tasty chicken dinner, we threw on “Class Action Park”, a documentary about a New Jersey theme park called Action Park that was notorious for its heinous rides and labor law negligence (teenage employees were paid $100 to test out a massive loop de loop water slide that was known to cause lacerations from the teeth of prior riders that got stuck in the loop! I got snoozy after a while though, and headed to bed.

I’ve talked to Rinsed, the company I am joining on March 4th, today. They asked if I could fly into New York for my first week, which will be a blast. But now that I am planning out the logistics for when this trip ends, it makes its termination a much more vivid reality. I will be ready though, I can already feel a tiny bit of antsy-ness to start doing something a bit more productive. This blog though, has been an important source of accomplishment and “work” every day.

My eyes are starting to shut down, bed time for me.