Back in Action: Thanksgiving

Sorry to any loyal followers for not posting anything over Thanksgiving while I was in Park City, Utah but I am back and here to tell you how it went.

To celebrate the very fattening holiday of Thanksgiving, my friends Steve, Kyle, Jaryn, and I went to Park City, Utah Wednesday to Sunday to stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, so it was nice for me to see some family for the holiday since I wasn't able to go home. So after finishing up some homework that I really didn't want to have to do over Thanksgiving break, and shaving the ridiculous neck bread I had sprouted over No Shave November (click to read Bobbie Jo's blog for details on this ridiculous month), we got on our way.

One of the most interesting parts of our adventure was the ride there. We weren't to far into the trip, only a little bit outside of Craig, when Kyle got pulled over for speeding. Luckily, he didn't get a ticket for speeding but he did get a ticket for wearing his seatbelt with the shoulder strap under his armpit, which the rest of us thought was hilarious. However, the most interesting part of this little police encounter was when the officer asked Kyle to step out of the car. After talking to him for a bit, they both came back and the officer asked us to all get out so he could search the car. While he was searching the car, we all asked Kyle what he was talking to him about, to which Kyle replied with a laugh, "He asked if we had meth." We were all very taken aback by this, but don't worry everyone, we most definetly did not have meth or any kind of drugs. So after that little setback, we were on our way again.

The next exciting part of the ride was when we were getting close to Park City. Steve was now driving and it was getting a little late and we were getting pretty hungary. At this point, we were all riding pretty quiet until Steve shattered the silence with, "Woah, a Sonic!" That's right, a Sonic fast food restaurant. Being from Minnesota, and the other guys all from the East Coast, not one of us have ever seen of much less been to a Sonic before. All of us have seen TV commercials for it, but have never been there. Needless to say, we have now. All of us ordered something different to get a full feel of the incredible menu they offer and I must say, my blue coconut limeade was phenominal.

So now that we were all full and satisfied, we finally arrived at my aunt and uncle's house, which by the way, is an awesome log cabin style home in a neighborhood entirely on the side of a mountain. After apologizing for/explaining why we arrived a little later than scheduled, we set up shop in the basement, which they are remodeling in order to rent out, and got ready for a poaching mission to Deer Valley the next day.

Something I feel I should mention at this point of the blog is that Steve had been feeling a little sick for a couple days now. To be continued.

So Thursday rolled around and we headed up to Deer Valley to try to get some turns and just ride. Getting there proved to be more difficult than we anticipated, as we got lost for awhile until we decided it would be a good idea to call for a little recap of the directions. After finally finding our way up to Empire lodge, which is roughly mid-mountain, we began looking for the way to get up to the top until we saw it. There was a bunch of local skiers and riders sessioning a flat down box they had set up. This was very exciting.

After a great session, we picked up a couple small things for dinner appetizers, and headed back in excited anticipation for Thanksgiving. Just so you get an idea of the excitement we had, my uncle is head chef at Deer Valley resort so yea, pretty excited for Thanksgiving dinner. Also, they were having about 20 friends over, most of whom were bringing some sort of food or desert to only make the dinner better. When we got back, there was already some guests there so we cleaned up and joined in. We had bought pickles and olives to add to the appetizers, which consisted of a shrimp dish that I'm not sure what it was seasoned with but it was excellent, and various flavors of cheese and crackers.

There's no way I'll be able to explain and describe all the incredible food that was there, so I'll just say that you have not had turkey until you've had my uncles turkey. Period. On top of that, the array of pies was incredible (I didn't even know there was such a thing as egg-nog pie), unfortunetly that night I couldn't even enjoy as much as I wanted to since I was so full from the amazing dinner. After just chilling for awhile, trying to calm my extremely full stomach, we spent the rest of the evening getting dominated by my cousin in Boggle and playing an intense game of Risk full of aliances and back stabbing.

Getting back to poor old Steve, a ridiculous amount of food didn't exactly help his growing illness. As we found out the next morning, he had spent the whole night throwing up and wouldn't be able to join us for another session at Deer Valley. However, on the up side for me at least, this session was even better than the previous one. There was still a few people there even Park City resort had opened that day, and after Jaryn and I got the tricks we were trying to stick, we headed back to check on Steve. Unfortunetly, we found him where we left him, looking half dead on the couch (no offense Steve). That night, Jaryn went to hang out with a friend from back home who now lives in Park City, so Kyle and I decided to check out some stuff around town, since, even though I've been there before, neither of us were that familiar with Park City.

The next day Steve was feeling a bit better, so we headed to Park City resort. We decided to go with the half day pass which was about half the cost of the whole day resort and it was worth it considering we were all exhausted after a day of riding. Unfortunetly, Park City's terrain park was not as nice to us as the Deer Valley session, so when we had taken enough abuse, we headed back.

That night is when the sickness took a turn for the worse. After my aunt and uncle made another fantastic meal of blue cheese burgers with chips and salsa, we decided to play another game of risk. After awhile into, I realized my stomach was hurting pretty bad and not just from being crazy full. I won't go into details but needless to say, that night got pretty rough for both Jaryn and I. And lucky for us, we had a 6 hour car ride ahead of us the next day. And we found out that my uncle too got the sickness, as well as I just find out today that one of my cousins got it too, so we felt pretty bad about that.

So now, after the rough ride in the car of 6 hours of trying to keep everything in my stomach, we are back at here at Colorado Mountain College and finally feeling better. Today was the first day my stomach didn't hurt all day so it's looking good. Even though we all had a great time in Park City, I have to admit it probably would've been a bit better without the whole being sick thing. But now we're feeling better, Steamboat's resort is open, and we can't wait to see friends and family over Christmas break. Peace.