Groupies!

Posted By Mark:

Well it’s 9:20pm Sunday night March 18th, we just passed mile 780 on the trip odometer, and we are about to drive through Price (I know, sorry Frandson’s, we really wanted to stop and visit but each time we drove through Price it was late at night and figured you and/or your kiddles were asleep). It’s Kimmi’s turn to drive and I’m quite bored so I decided to pull out my laptop and start writing a post about our fun weekend getaway.

A week or two ago Kimmi and I went to a Guster concert in downtown Salt Lake City and it is easily safe to say that it was the best concert I’ve ever been to. It was immensely entertaining and my cheeks literally started to spasm from smiling and laughing so much.

Due to the concerts awesomeness, upon returning home that night we innocently looked at Guster’s tour list to see if they were playing again anywhere nearby. Sadly they weren’t, the next closest concert was in some city in Colorado we had never heard of, and so we put our thought of becoming Guster groupies aside….. Temporarily.

Not being able to let it go, a few days later we once again took a look at Guster’s tour dates and actually put in the name of the Colorado city into Google maps. Turns out it was a manageable seven hour drive to a ski town called Crested Butte. After a bit more research we found a hotel offering a night stay, tickets to the concert, and a day ski pass at a reasonable price. We decided to go for it, and decided to leave Spencer with the in-laws to make it all in all relaxing getaway.

We hit the road after work on Friday and got to Crested Butte late that night. Saturday morning I woke up and hit the slopes. Kimmi isn’t interested in skiing or snowboarding so she hung out in the hotel working on various craft projects. It was a gorgeous day and I had a blast.

I’m not avid skier in any way. I try to get out at least once a year and I actually use the same skis that I’ve had since high school because I’m too cheap to buy new ones. Every time I do go skiing I’m extremely glad I did and I start wondering why I don’t ski more often. I even start innocently browsing online for new skis because it was just so much fun and for some reason I figure I would be able to ski faster on new skies!

This was the first time I’ve ever skied outside of Utah, and the first time in over a decade that I went skiing by myself. I remember I stopped skiing by myself because I didn’t like not having someone to talk to on the lift and I would quickly got bored with the CD mix I’d listen to on my diskman.  

Thanks to the advancement of technology times have changed. and my opinion of skiing alone has changed with it. I quite enjoyed skiing by myself again! Instead of 15 songs on a CD I now had 5000 songs on my iPod to keep me entertained on the lifts and on the runs. Also with the help of a handy GPS unit I was able to keep track of my stats and entertain myself by trying to reach my top speed. 

I love to ski fast. And I spent most of my day on the steepest and fastest run I could find on the resort. At one point I even made a video with my phone as I skied (This reminds me, I really need to invest in a ski helmet cause isn't that how Sonny Bono died?)  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0bWGQBIOk&feature=youtu.be 

I discovered two other reasons I enjoyed skiing by myself.

        1)  I never had to wait at the bottom of the run to rendezvous with my ski companion.

        2)  I was able to complete the same run as many times as I wanted without feeling bad that we weren’t exploring the rest of the resort.

Most of all I am grateful that Kimmi enjoyed her time relaxing and crafting at the hotel.

Of course the main reason we went on this trip was to see Guster. Sadly the concert was an outdoor concert and just as the concert began it began to blizzard. Anticipating such an outdoor venue we packed and dressed accordingly wearing coats, pants, and gloves as though we were about ascend Mt Everest.

The fun part about going to a concert in such a small ski town was that there weren’t many places for the musicians to hide. While getting ready to go to the concert we saw one of the lead singers of Guster walking through the parking lot. We quickly ran over to him and got our picture with him. Later while standing in the venue I was able to meet Guster’s Bassist as he was walking around during the opening band and I could have met the drummer but by that point the novelty of meeting the band had worn off so I left him alone. 

Kimmi and I with Adam from Guster:

It was a fun concert. It was obviously slightly marred by the fact that it was snowing, windy, and cold. But all in all Kimmi and I are extremely glad we made the trip.

A few pictures from the concert:

This was our first trip away from Spencer, thus solidifying the fact that it can be done, and will be done again in the future.

Final comments:

-Kimmi and I also very much enjoyed exploring the town of Crested Butte. Quite small, kind of what I imagine Park City was 40 years ago.

I put sun screen on my face but didn’t put any on my ears thinking that they’d be covered by my hat. Well my ear lobes were exposed all day so thanks to the bright spring sun I had some nasty looking blisters on my ear lobes. Kimmi kept commenting that it looked as though I had gotten my ears gauged.