Update... Sept 8, 2005

Good morning all,

It has been a craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy week, and I am just now sending out my update on all the haps with me, so let’s just get to it shall we?

Ok, so just to keep all fresh in your mind here is what has gone on…

I headed out of town and catch a flight out of Love Field, Bella dropped me off. She picks me up at work and stop the presses her hair has gone from nearly black to nearly white. You would think that it would be really too much of a contrast and wouldn’t look good. But no, Bella is like Angelina Jolie no matter her hair color she looks awesome. It is sort of like that “horse of a different color” from the Wizard of Oz, it keeps changing colors and you just go with it. By the way, does anyone know if they just kept spray painting that animal? With all the animal rights activist these days, you cant just go around spray painting any dog, sheep, or horse you want… that is a damn shame!

So I get on the airplane and head to Houston. Ann picks me up from the airport and we immediately fall into our routine of non-stop machine gun talking, the reason we do this is obvious… we don’t see each other enough and she needs to move to Dallas!!!! Anyway, we head over to Jason’s for fun, food, and fotography (yes I know it starts with a “ph”). The weekend begins.

We all pile into the car at around 7 something in the morning to head to the Houston International Airport to catch the steel bird to Denver. There are only five of us at the time, Jason, Becky, Cort, me, and, Dave (who should count as two… if you are 6’4” and could eat the fatted calf by yourself you should count as two!) We have to go by Ja’s office to get the confirmation for the rental car, and this poses a problem because we are not exactly running ahead of schedule, Cort was seven and a half minutes late getting over to Ja’s and we didn’t know it then but we really needed that seven and a half minutes… seems pretty insignificant doesn’t it, enough time to merely go to the bathroom and grab something out of the fridge and check your emails before heading back to the tv but we could have used it. We get the confirmation and jump back into the car, we are speeding down the highway at a death defying 15 miles per hour due to absolute morning grid lock. There I sit crammed into a Honda Accord, with 4 other people just as big as me with Cort’s suitcase on my lap… thank god we all showered!!! We make it into the parking lot with about 20 minutes to go before the flight. We are running, we are panting, we are damn afraid we are going to miss this flight. So Dave and Cort and myself get our boarding passes and we head to security, leaving Jason and Becky in the able hands of a ticketing agent who has the urgency of a byzantine monk. Meanwhile the race to the gate is on for the rest of us… we race through security and are running down the terminal with Dave in the lead, he looked like a very tall, very white, Carl Lewis dressed in his cowboy best complete with Red Wing boots! We get to the gate and we are trying to talk the lady into keeping the doors open just a little while longer, just a minute or two so that Jason and Becky can make it… and they do!!! Woohoo!!! We get on the flight, get off the flight, and find out our luggage didn’t make it on board and we have to wait in Denver for the next flight to come in… fat lot of good all of the hurrying did us, eh? We sit down and immediately begin the drinking of the weekend… there was a lot of it, mostly done by Dave in one particular sitting. So we wait we get our luggage, then we find out that Dave’s brother’s flight is 4 hours delayed and it will take him a while to get to Denver, so that we can begin the 4+ hour car ride.

We waited patiently, and got in the car to begin ripping on each other for 4 hours… we made one rude comment after the next, completely entertaining ourselves, and everyone knowing that there was no malice behind it, so it was a good ride. Although, if you ever meet Cort or go on vacation with him… remember to hide the lip balm (just a word of caution). We finally find our accommodations, and everyone settles in. We get pizza at the grocery store and begin to play cards. We keep playing cards well into the night, finally I have to go to bed, knowing that we have to be up at some ungodly hour to leave by 7am to go white water rafting. I wake up the next morning and begin to change into my bikini (which in CO in Sept… not a good idea, but Becky did this too so I wasn’t alone). It is cold people, not cool, not brisk, it is 36 degrees this morning and the water aint gonna be warm!!! Dave is completely hung over, he cant get out of bed, he has already hurled once, and there is no way any of us can carry him to the car… we didn’t bring Hulk Hogan with us, he is going to have to stay. We get pulled over and Becky bats her eyes right out of that little ticket… “I didn’t know officer, I promise!” So we go down the river, and we are literally laughing the whole way. We get pelted with frigid water and it is a huge joke that Becky got completely dowsed, while your truly got a sprinkling! What can I say, it is the luck of the draw, or the Irish, or whatever.

We get back, and I immediately take a nap, it is a 4 hour nap, but a nap nonetheless, we get up get dressed and head out for Chinese food… when in Rome, right? It is good Chinese food and we watch the aggies flat out lose to Clemson… geez what a heart break.

The next day we all wake up and Ja and Becky are off to go mountain climbing… why didn’t anyone else go, you are probably wondering? Because the rest of us like being on the ground, and not risking our lives to merely get a cool photo at the top. So Dustin and I go walking, we walk all around Mount Crested Butte, for 2+ hours. This was my favorite part of the trip, we laugh, we talk, we see a dear, we swing on a swing set, we get tired, we go back home…. It was great. So we all go out to lunch, Dave is no longer hungover and Cort is always up for some chow, god love that Cort… you can always count on him! So we go get some lunch, at a restaurant that is NOT a sports bar… (inside joke). And then Dave and Dustin and myself decide to hike up Mount Crested Butte. We were on our way to the top, we were like people on that show “Lost”, we were dirty and desperate for civilization! We go about 2 miles up the mountain, and a couple pass us going down. We ask how much farther… they say, “about two and a half more miles”, we immediately turn around, there is no way we could make that. We are not the people from “Lost”, if there was a show called “Tired” we would have been those people. We get back and Cort is safely on the couch where we left him. It really was amazing how much bonding Cort did with the couch. He slept on it, and during his waking hours (other than the rafting) he was sitting on it. Cort LOVED the couch! He had a great relaxing vacation… good to be Cort.

We all head out for dinner again, and we get back and watch a little tv. I head to bed early, realizing that there is a nearly 5 hour car ride we need to be up for in the morning…. Everyone else decides to stay up drink. Dustin is green in the morning, how he made if 4+ hours in that minivan go up winding, twirling, bending roads without blowing chunks, I will never know!!! We all make it to the airport and we all head our separate directions, the weekend was a success, and we are all not only friends, but good friends. So I get home passed 11pm and fall in bed.


All about the toes,
Martha