golfkat Travel Blog

and common sense took over.  Actually, I stopped when my back started giving me trouble in the early 90’s.  But I loved to ski, and to race and was fortunate to ski all over Colorado, Utah, and California.  But Aspen is the best, because it offers a lots of everything:  outstanding skiing, great food, crazy people, great shopping, well known celebrities, and lots of night life.
 
I actually went to speak in a series of continuing education (Pharmacy)seminars for a friend of mine.  He called himself the mayor of Sausalito, and would pay my way or so he said, and I would conduct the seminars, and collect the money.  I had just gotten a new job, but they allowed me to take a paid week off since this trip was educational and planned well in advance of my start.
 
Landing in Grand Junction, CO is one of the biggest disappointments ever, as it is on the western slope of Colorado, very desolate, and pretty dreary.  It is not at all how you picture the famous ski resorts and towns in the Rockies.  But as the van made its way to Aspen, things started looking up.  We passed a few smaller resorts, a golf course covered with snow, and finally reached Glenwood Springs, the gateway to Aspen and Snowmass.
 
Much to my surprise, they had my buddy and I room with a crazy guy we called Rapid Robert.  He was a ski racer, amateur photographer, and had the worst stutter of anyone I have ever met.  He headed out for the first run of the trip, which was the last run of the day, as the lifts closed.  We headed to the nearest bar, and started the party.  We met up with some of the other seminar participants, who later became good friends over the years.  Most of them were from Denver, and were actually there to learn something.
 
The ski town of Aspen has it all, with several resorts, fine restaurants, gated communities, expensive boutiques, and glamorous people.  It has a vibe that excites and thrills, no matter who you are.  We found that people there are very friendly, and even friendlier in the many bars and dance halls of downtown Aspen. We never felt alone after that first night there.  Time to party hearty.
 
We warmed up the first day at Snowmass, as it is a little smaller, and less intimidating than Aspen or Ajax, as the locals call it.  We found the famous run, called Big Burn, named because in taking the run from top to bottom, your legs will burn, burn, burn.  It is one of the longest and best runs I have ever skied.  We ran into more of the seminar folks, many of them excellent skiers and racers.
 
That evening was our first seminar, but nobody was there.  They were all in the hot tub, so we decided to order drinks and start there.  After several hours, we decided to adjourn to a nearby restaurant.  Several unregistered people just showed up, paid their seminar fees, and left.  They just wanted a tax write-off, and some kind of proof they attended.  Needless to say, this provided a good pot of money for our drinking and dining adventures in Aspen.
 
We all looked forward to Ajax, and its legendary runs.  It is a spectacular mountain with all kinds of runs, and jumps.  We skied through the trees, where it is so quiet you can only hear your own skiis cut through the snow.  We did not want to stop for lunch, but we needed some fortification, if you know what I mean.  That night we invaded the famous and old Hotel Jerome until closing time.  It is a must stop in Aspen, any time of year.  It has lots of character and is full of characters.  Some locals say it is haunted!
 
The next night while shopping, we ended up in a swanky leather and fur shop.  A couple of nice ladies walked in, and as we saw no one from the store, we pretended to help them shop.  We finally got them to try on the most expensive furs, and told them how fabulous they looked.  Then their boyfriends or husbands came in, and they shared the excitement.  But then the store clerk emerged, and we got the big stare down from the guys.  Needless to say, they were really pissed off at us.  We left in a hurry, laughing all the way down the block.
 
We seminared and skied the next several days, in beautiful weather, on magnificently groomed slopes.  At night, we always had some kind of group dinner after the lectures.  We stayed out late, had alot of laughs, and met some really nice people.  We shared a table at one famous restaurant with the only 4 members of the Latvian American Medical Society.  They joined our seminar the next day, just to make sure the trip was tax write off worthy.  We also saw some of Aspen’s more famous residents, like John Denver, Claudine Longet, and some of the Kennedy and Ford kids.
 
This Rapid Robert character was really something.  He raced every day, and took photos at night.  We met up with several women who lived and worked in Aspen year round, through a friend of one of our seminar participants.  Rapid had talked or stuttered one of them into posing for some nude photos.  Later, they joined us in the hot tub, and had a party for us at their Aspen apartment.
 
The final day of skiing was upon us.  Rapid had bought a huge ski trophy for our pharmacist only race to be held on Ajax that afternoon.  We were reluctant to race, since many of the skiers, especially the Denver guys, were excellent skiers.  Rapid gave a couple of us a crash course in racing, and told us that racing fast and winning was not related to one’s skiing ability, but to one’s racing ability.  We ran the NASTAR course on Ajax, and most of the other skiers in our group had raced down the course.  I was next to last in line, and felt like backing out.  But I was able to muster the courage, and took off when they told me to go.
 
When we finished, Rapid comes up to me and says that I won!!!  He hands me this huge trophy and tells me that I have to ski down the hill with it and take it back to our condo.  I was floating on my skis.  He volunteered to take the trophy back, while the rest of us decided to celebrate down the mountain to the bar.  It was the most enjoyable run of my life, as we laughed, and slalomed through the Aspen trees to the famous Little Nell’s Bar.  I bought the first round, and the rest was history, as they say.  I still have a photo of me racing down the hill, framed and covered with dust in the garage.  It was a great memory of a great trip.  Aspen will always be a magical place for me.
 
Back to the seminar, as we were able to get a lot of drop in physicians to sign up and pay for our courses.  I ended up with enough money to pay for my trip and lots of drinks and dinners, since the guy who sponsored the trip did not reimburse me.  I made some ski friends in Denver for life.  I stopped in Denver many times over the years on trips from back east.   They took me to Bronco games and a Springsteen concert.  I even kept a pair of skis and boots there.  John, Bill, Art, Ed, and Kurt would become good friends, fellow skiers, and drinking buddies over the years.  I returned to ski in Colorado dozens of times after this trip.  But none could match my first trip to Aspen and  the most exceptional ski trip of my life.