Day 14 - Friggin' Blackberry

All -

I'm depressed. My Blackberry phone crashed (again). The tether is broken.

I spent over an hour on the phone being bounced from Blackberry support to AT&T support and back. Like a fool I tried to download upgraded BlackBerry operating software and that is what caused the issue (although Blackberry took no responsibility). So AT&T needs to ship me a new phone. Or I can drive to Denver to get a replacement.

So this took a great day and made it ok. For a bit.

There is a winter storm warning in effect until Thursday. Durango got 16 inches in the from noon Monday to noon today. They expect another 10 in the town by tomorrow morning.

I doubled down on my room in Durango and stayed the extra night. I skied Purgatory , now called Durango Mountain Resort, today. Powder was up over my thighs. Would have been great if it wasn't my first time on skis since last winter. Ok it still was great. Wore myself out digging out of snow most of the morning and then eventually found my ski legs. Temporarily lost a ski on the first run and then dropped my goggles off the lift before the second one. (The Crackberry incident makes the trifecta for the day.) Still, a bad day skiing beats a good day of work.

For Pat who worried about the stray dogs and what would happen to them, I passed three of them on the road yesterday chomping on an elk carcass. So my assumption was correct. Nature finds a way.

Forgot to mention Cowboy Bruce from yesterday's notes. He is the Durango equivalent of North Tahoe's Tie-Dye Bill. Cowboy Bruce was telling everyone who would listen, and some who wouldn't, about his saddle and the moose he killed. I suffered through the story twice.

Also forgot to mention that most of the drinks we free as people kept buying rounds.

I knew I was in the back country when I overheard a couple of grizzled old timers bemoaning the state of kids these days. "This new generation does not even know how to pitch a tent." Unless you were a grade school drop-out, I think most people learned this (as Eddie Murphy said, 'no thank you. I'll take the zero.').

Best line of the night, "Stick around cowboy, you may like it here." Seriously. Giddyup.

Tomorrow I will head to Wolf's Creek (or "Crick", as the locals call it). The snow there is supposed to be even more epic than here. Then I'll head north to Denver.

So my trip has turned from see to ski. Most of the updates from here on out may be boring. Especially since it seems like it will be repeatable powder days for the foreseeable future.

Hank