Growing up in Florida I always felt like I was missing out not having a real Fall season. The idea of cool weather and leaves changing seemed so exciting. I was always disappointed it didn't happen much in Florida. Little did I know I was really missing out not having a true Spring. I had no idea how exciting it is to watch green return to the world after months of brown.
This month I learned Spring is kind of weird too, almost schizophrenic. It will be sunny and warm one day and icy and cold the next. This weekend we had perfect weather on Saturday- 70's with blue bird skies. That morning I was surprised by Daffodil blooms in my yard. The next day was cold and miserable. It froze overnight and we got an inch of snow. Today my Daffodils looked limp and pathetic. I tried to blame Bogey for tromping on them but Drew wisely pointed out that it froze last night and that's probably why they looked so sad. He said the Daffodils just bloomed too early. Why can't the weather make up it's mind? At least now I can properly blame the right thing for my ruined Daffodils (most importantly I am not the one to blame).
We had a great weekend enjoying all that spring-time has to offer. Saturday Drew and I spent the day climbing in St. Vrain Canyon. Drew wanted to lead climb again so we picked an easier slab route called 'Community Service.'
That night we took the bus from Longmont to Denver to go the Rockies game for our friend's birthday. The highlight of our night (and quite possibly Drew's entire life) was when Drew started the wave. Getting 50,000 people to stand up and say "woooo!" is quite an accomplishment. Between the weather, my Daffodils, climbing, and the Rockies game it was a perfect Saturday.
The next morning we woke up early (which was a miracle in itself considering we stayed up too late and had a little too much fun the night before) to meet our friend Andy to snowboard at Keystone. When we left the house it was sunny and warm again. I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up an hour later we were in a complete white-out blizzard. It was so strange to fall asleep in spring and wake up back in winter.
Then for some reason Drew thought it would be a good idea to drive over Loveland pass (rather than taking the safe, non-scary Eisenhower tunnel) to get to the ski resort. It was so snowy we couldn't see more than a foot in front of the car, which is never good when you're driving on winding, steep mountain roads that have no guard rails. I had to close my eyes because it was so scary I couldn't watch.
We finally made it to Keystone safely. Once we got on the mountain we realized that the white-out snow storm was actually a good thing because the mountain was covered in fresh powder. I had always heard that Spring skiing is the best. Now I can say from experience, Spring skiing is the best! Amazing snow, no crowds, and a little bit of sunshine. The only catch was that the blizzard that blessed us with amazing snow apparently caused several car accidents on I-70. They ended up closing the interstate for about 4 hours, which means that we couldn't drive home. We ended up having to wait about 3 hours for them to clear the road before they were able to open it back up. Luckily our friends Sarah and Jeff were able to break into our house to let Bogey out and we eventually made it home at a decent time, in one piece.
Here's a video of Drew shredding the freshies:
Drew's fun fact: In 2002, Tamás Vicsek of the Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary along with his colleagues analyzed videos of 14 waves at large Mexican football stadiums, developing a standard model of wave behavior (published in the September 12 issue of Nature). He found that it takes only the actions of a few dozen fans to trigger a wave. Once started, it usually rolls in aclockwise direction at a rate of about 12 m/s (40 ft/s), or about 22 seats per second. At any given time the wave is about 15 seats wide. These observations appear to be applicable across different cultures and sports, though details vary in individual cases
