According to Bobby Ray Ellison, a senior member of Jeff Gordon’s pit crew, “You’re driving for several hours, lap after lap after lap, in a hot car, keeping yourself hydrated. You can hold it in for only so long. And what are you gonna do, take 30 seconds to hit the head when races are decided by milliseconds? Hell no. You’re gonna pee in your pants, which are specially equipped to absorb up to two quarts of urine.”

According to Bobby Ray Ellison, a senior member of Jeff Gordon’s pit crew, 'You’re driving for several hours, lap after lap after lap, in a hot car, keeping yourself hydrated. You can hold it in for only so long. And what are you gonna do, take 30 seconds to hit the head when races are decided by milliseconds? Hell no. You’re gonna pee in your pants, which are specially equipped to absorb up to two quarts of urine.'

Today I paid, well Pete did, for my bartending course.  It's nice to know that 10 years corporate experience can't even get me a waitressing job.  A friend told me today that the people that he's tried to talk me up to for jobs instantly get intimidated by my experience.  So this will be a way to make some restaurant contacts and get the money for culinary school.  It will also get me an internship at Keystone which will hopefully lead to a job there which means free ski passes to all mountains in Colorado plus Lake Tahoe for your entire family and that's what it's all about here. 

We now have a Wii on loan, for us to use, for about a month.  So mom/dad please send me the games until we figure how to get the console out here.

Other than that we watched the races at Texas Motor Speedway.

Both the Sprint and Nationwide races were rained out this week so they ran both races today.  Amazingly Denny Hamlin, who just had knee surgery 19 days ago to repair a torn ACL, rallied and won the race.

And as I said in the previous post, we watched the Mets game against Chicago. 

We'll have some leftovers for dinner and off to bed.  We're doing a bunch of running around tomorrow then we have plans with friends tomorrow night so it'll be awhile before I'll get a chance to post anything.

It was so nice to be able to watch a little bit of the game today.  This will be a very rare occurrence to say the least here in Colorado.

They are set to win the game, it's the bottom of the 8th and their up by 5, so no one had to embarrassed to be wearing a Mets Jersey. 

So I saw this and thought it was too cute and figured I'd share with everyone in case you didn't see it....

Karl Lagerfeld - Chief Designer for Chanel


John Galliano - He has his own line and also designs for Christian Dior


Dontella Versace - Took over Versace after the tragic death of her brother Gianni


Dolce & Gabana - The Italian Design duo for the line D&G

It was so nice to be able to watch a little bit of the game today.  This will be a very rare occurrence to say the least here in Colorado.

They are set to win the game, it's the bottom of the 8th and their up by 5, so no one had to embarrassed to be wearing a Mets Jersey. 

Today was closing day at Vail.  We were planning on going with Andy & Sheila so we headed over to Frisco and grabbed a bite while we waited for Andy to get out a work.  We dropped my car at the ski shop piled our stuff and ourselves into their 4-Runner and headed to Vail.  
Andy's cousin, Scott, said that it was crazy in the village for closing day so we weren't sure where to park.  When the pay lots fill up they let you park on the street but at noon, when we got there, they were still packing people into them.  It's $25 to park in one of these lots.  Andy headed to the valet lot where it was $35 to have them park our car in the garage or $45 a VIP spot near the exit.  Andy let us get ready in that lot then he went off to find a spot on the street and met up with us later.

We headed up to the top to get a run in and to get over to the lift where we would all meet up.  Here is the sign at the top Welcoming everyone to opening day.

The whole point is to dress a little crazy.  Most people have on grass skirts and leis or beads.  But some people go above and beyond and actually wear costumes but you never know if they're contestants for the Pond Skim. 

This is the first time that I've skied without a jacket.  My closing day outfit.  (Thanks for the tri-pod dad!)

And no I'm not wearing jeans, those are my rockin' Gortex denim snowboarding pants.  Sheila said that there were some resorts that had 'No Denim' signs for closing weekend but that wasn't the case at Vail.  Lots of people were wearing regular jeans or jean shorts.

While I was watching the gear while Pete made a quick pit stop I saw this cool snow structure.  It was filled with what looked like ski rental returns and as the sign shows it's for employees only, even thought I don't think that little girl is old enough to work. 

Now that we were all back together we took a run and headed back up again.  I think the rules were a little lax for closing day because usually you aren't allowed to drink on the lift, people do but you never get on at the bottom with an open beer or get off at the top with one, this was not the case today.  This is the trash can at the top of one of the peaks.


It's so nice to have someone to hang out with again.  Sheila and I had a good laugh over this guy.  I don't think he found us laughing at his outfit amusing but we sure did.


We stopped to take some video, unfortunately the one with Pete and Andy didn't come out.  Something was majorly wrong with my phone yesterday.  A lot of my pictures came out black and I'm missing at least 3 videos.  Here is the only one that it managed to keep.



I said in an earlier post that they renamed the International trail at Vail after Lindsey Vonn.  Here is the sign that proves it.  I'm really lucky that Andy pointed it out or I never would have realized. 

So we finally made it to Golden Peak where all the festivities were taking place.  Andy wanted a pic in front of the pond skim crowd.  For closing day he was rocking his onesie. 


Since we were standing by the starting gate we got to have a look at the contestants costumes.  There was a lot of animals,  in this shot a shark, a giraffe and a rabbit.

This was my favorite, the penguin.  Now you can't tell from the shot but that is a guy wearing ladies bikini bottoms.  In the end his costume got the best of him and he had a nasty wipeout.

We were waiting for the guys and I saw this group of people.  Someone, not me, asked him about the suits and he had the best response.  They were from the 2010 Versace collection and it was impossible to get a hold of them.  That made me laugh and when he turned and saw me laughing the least I could do was back up the story so I said I saw them on the runway during fashion week.  They even had a lady in their group with a matching dress.

We headed over to 'The George' to have a drink and get a bite to eat.  It was a long day and all we had been snacking on was cookies. 

Pete and I split the George burger, it was pretty good,  the onions on the burger could have been sweeter.  See one Martha onion lesson and I'm an expert but Pete agreed.

 We headed over to Andy & Sheila's when we were done eating.  They have a spot like we do, right on the water.

So I saw this and thought it was too cute and figured I'd share with everyone in case you didn't see it....

Karl Lagerfeld - Chief Designer for Chanel


John Galliano - He has his own line and also designs for Christian Dior


Dontella Versace - Took over Versace after the tragic death of her brother Gianni


Dolce & Gabana - The Italian Design duo for the line D&G

Today was closing day at Vail.  We were planning on going with Andy & Sheila so we headed over to Frisco and grabbed a bite while we waited for Andy to get out a work.  We dropped my car at the ski shop piled our stuff and ourselves into their 4-Runner and headed to Vail.  

Andy's cousin, Scott, said that it was crazy in the village for closing day so we weren't sure where to park.  When the pay lots fill up they let you park on the street but at noon, when we got there, they were still packing people into them.  It's $25 to park in one of these lots.  Andy headed to the valet lot where it was $35 to have them park our car in the garage or $45 a VIP spot near the exit.  Andy let us get ready in that lot then he went off to find a spot on the street and met up with us later.

We headed up to the top to get a run in and to get over to the lift where we would all meet up.  Here is the sign at the top Welcoming everyone to opening day.


The whole point is to dress a little crazy.  Most people have on grass skirts and leis or beads.  But some people go above and beyond and actually wear costumes but you never know if they're contestants for the Pond Skim. 


This is the first time that I've skied without a jacket.  My closing day outfit.  (Thanks for the tri-pod dad!)


And no I'm not wearing jeans, those are my rockin' Gortex denim snowboarding pants.  Sheila said that there were some resorts that had 'No Denim' signs for closing weekend but that wasn't the case at Vail.  Lots of people were wearing regular jeans or jean shorts.

While I was watching the gear while Pete made a quick pit stop I saw this cool snow structure.  It was filled with what looked like ski rental returns and as the sign shows it's for employees only, even thought I don't think that little girl is old enough to work. 



Now that we were all back together we took a run and headed back up again.  I think the rules were a little lax for closing day because usually you aren't allowed to drink on the lift, people do but you never get on at the bottom with an open beer or get off at the top with one, this was not the case today.  This is the trash can at the top of one of the peaks.



It's so nice to have someone to hang out with again.  Sheila and I had a good laugh over this guy.  I don't think he found us laughing at his outfit amusing but we sure did.




We stopped to take some video, unfortunately the one with Pete and Andy didn't come out.  Something was majorly wrong with my phone yesterday.  A lot of my pictures came out black and I'm missing at least 3 videos.  Here is the only one that it managed to keep.



I said in an earlier post that they renamed the International trail at Vail after Lindsey Vonn.  Here is the sign that proves it.  I'm really lucky that Andy pointed it out or I never would have realized. 


So we finally made it to Golden Peak where all the festivities were taking place.  Andy wanted a pic in front of the pond skim crowd.  For closing day he was rocking his onesie. 









Since we were standing by the starting gate we got to have a look at the contestants costumes.  There was a lot of animals,  in this shot a shark, a giraffe and a rabbit.


This was my favorite, the penguin.  Now you can't tell from the shot but that is a guy wearing ladies bikini bottoms.  In the end his costume got the best of him and he had a nasty wipeout.





We were waiting for the guys and I saw this group of people.  Someone, not me, asked him about the suits and he had the best response.  They were from the 2010 Versace collection and it was impossible to get a hold of them.  That made me laugh and when he turned and saw me laughing the least I could do was back up the story so I said I saw them on the runway during fashion week.  They even had a lady in their group with a matching dress.


We headed over to 'The George' to have a drink and get a bite to eat.  It was a long day and all we had been snacking on was cookies. 

Pete and I split the George burger, it was pretty good,  the onions on the burger could have been sweeter.  See one Martha onion lesson and I'm an expert but Pete agreed.


 We headed over to Andy & Sheila's when we were done eating.  They have a spot like we do, right on the water.