Issue #135 - Snovember

.  November 2018  .

Greetings All!

Here we are. Nearly Christmas!  Michelle and Dave got to do a little traveling in November. The kids stayed here and went to school, training and generally fended for themselves...apparently! 

There was also a little bit of sport going on as well.

 Pirate's Week 5k Sea Swim

The start!

 Jake took part in the Pirate's week 5k swim race at the start of the month.

There was a US Olympic 10k swimmer down for the weekend who shared his olympic swimming experiences from Rio with the swimmers.

He was also down to swim and the kids were looking forward to competing with him.

Unfortunately he hadn't actually trained since Rio, and that showed as he was quite a way back from the leading swimmers after the first (of three) laps.

Final sprint after 4.8k!

 Jake and teammate Alex swam off each other for the entire race and were neck and neck at the business end.

A photo finish!

 The end result was Alex by a finger nail, and Jake was 2nd.  It was a great swim by both of them.

Finished!

Post-race interview

After that it was off to the Rugby club for training! There was a visiting Coach out from England who spent some time with the boys and went through a few drills etc.

The under 16/19s

While that was going on, Dave was inside the club watching the All Blacks play England. Ex-Cayman Kiwi Marty was in town and he popped in to say Gidday, watch the footy and have a quiet beer.

Dave & Marty watching the Rugby

The following weekend Michelle entered the Cayman Triathlon.  Last year she won the Sprint distance but she usually does the Olympic distance and had no excuse not to this year so she was up against the serious competitors.  She did pretty well, coming in in 3rd position (even after a toilet stop!).  The time wasn't her best but she was happy enough with the result. Well done! 

A fund-raising touch tournament was held as part of the Movember activities.  Anyone with a Mo scored double points.  Michelle drew one on, but given the humidity, that soon disappeared!

They had a fun time and ended up in third while raising some cash for the cause.

Michelle's team

 Another visitor hit town in November.  A kiwi as well!

Koro (of Cayman Rugby TV fame), wife Emily and daughter Havana spent a week back on island.

We caught up with them at the rugby club watching the Ireland game, and again the following day at Brunch, which is always a bit of fun!

Cayman Rugby TV - Kiwis on each end with a couple of Aussies in the middle.

Colorado

We jetted off to Steamboat Springs (near-ish to Denver), Colorado for a week to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary.  The ski season was iminent, but we weren't sure if they would be open or not. The route there was via Toronto (don't ask) to Denver, then drive to Steamboat.  We stayed overnight in Toronto and caught an early flight the next morning into Denver.

Colorado

We picked up a rental car at the airport and headed off to Steamboat.  It was supposed to be about 3 hours.  The rental guy said that there had been a lot of snow and they were expecting another 24 inches of snow that night.  With that news we hastily headed off towards the mountains hoping to avoid the storm.

Heading into the hills.  The weather starts to look a bit grim.

Although pretty, the driving conditions soon turned pretty nasty

Visibility was down to a few feet at times, and the snow and ice soon turned the road into slush in some parts, solid ice in others.  Not a lot of fun!

A few large trucks were seen sliding slowly off the road - not under control.  A few cars ended up on the side of the road as well.  We continued at a snail's pace.  The road was soon closed behind us, so there was no turning back.  Luckily there was a bunch of snow ploughs/trucks doing their best to clear the snow and ice off the road so the traffic could get through.  At one point we were directly behind one of these guys, which made driving slightly easier, although still very slow.  We followed the truck for a while as the snow became even heavier.  The truck seemed to veer to the right so we simply followed in its tracks as we couldn't see the road.  Unbeknown to us, he was taking the motorway exit and heading back down on the opposite side of the motorway.  Bugger. We couldn't turn around so had to go all the way back down that section of motorway until we found the next exit that took as back to where we were about 30 minutes ago... Progress was not great, and it was dark by midday!

This would be about as clear as it got the whole trip

We pressed on, slowly, and eventually made it to Steamboat by about 5 pm. Pitch dark!  The trip took an extra three hours because of the snow.  A nerve settling drink or two was had once we got the car parked up in the garage under where we were staying.  

The snow continued to fall over night

The weather was still pretty rough on the Sunday morning so skiing was out.  We decided to do a little exploring around town instead. We checked out the town a little and even popped into the Museum to warm up and check out some of the local history.  Up the hill a little was a waterfall which was supposed to be a nice hike.  With the massive dump of snow the hike wasn't quite so easy, but it was short - thankfully! We could've carried on to hike to a lake but we weren't equipped for snow hiking!

Fish Creek Falls behind us (frozen of course!)

After that massive walk (1/4 mile) we headed to Strawberry Park Hot Springs to relax.

This is where you pay for your entry

It's an awesome spot!  There are several large pools at varying temperatures, as well as deck chairs so you can enjoy the sun...

The temperature had soared to a stinking hot 32 degrees.....fahrenheit.

The pools were nice and hot and very relaxing!

One was cold. Didn't go deeper than our toes in that one!

Such a nice spot!

Sitting in a hot spring, next to some snow was a little strange at first

If you are ever in Steamboat, this is one of the places to go.

This is the cute little changing hut (co-ed!) - with open fire inside.

 Monday turned out to be a nice clear day, so off we went skiing for the day...and the next day as well!  There were plenty of runs open which was great as they only opened for the season a few days earlier. 

The fresh snow was nice

Awesome day!

By the end of our second day skiing, we were starting to fade a little.  It hadn't snowed since the weekend either so the runs were starting to ice over a bit, which wasn't ideal for us novice skiers.

Steamboat, from the bottom

Steamboat at 4:30pm...  Getting dark!

The 27th was our 25 Wedding Anniversary, so after a day on the slopes, we relaxed in the outdoor spa pool at our resort before heading out for dinner a bit later.

This is us now

And 25 years ago (with Sonya & Gerard).  Hardly changed a bit!

It was still early in the season so we had a bit of trouble finding somewhere open.  In the end we found a nice steak place for dinner.  The food was great, but we couldn't get over the size of the baked potato! At first we though it was a loaf of bread! It was massive.

You could feed a family of four with this thing!

There was a gym where we stayed, so the mornings that we didn't ski we went over there for a run on the treadmills and to steal a coffee from reception. 

Cooling off after a run

Trying out some of the local brews.  Not bad!

Told you it was cold!

 

We headed back over to Denver on the Thursday afternoon.  We had an appointment at a university in Fort Collins that Sam is interested in on Friday morning, and with another storm coming in, thought we'd better get there early and not risk getting caught in the snow again.

CSU is one of the schools that Sam is looking at for next year.  We met with the swim coach and also had a quick tour around the campus.  It's a nice spot - if a little cooler than here!

They have a new American Football stadium as well which looks pretty cool

After that, it was off to the airport - via another dumping of snow!  But we made it on time for our flight to Cayman, via Dallas.

Next problem was that Dallas was closed down because of an electrical storm.  We sat on our plane on the tarmac in Denver for about 1.5 hours before it was ok to leave.  But then ice had formed on our plane so it had to go and be de-iced before we could take off.  Made it to Dallas around midnight.  Got to a hotel and found some other people in our room.  Finally got another room for a short sleep before heading back to sunny Cayman mid afternoon saturday.

Click here to see plenty more pics from Steamboat

We made sure we got to the beach before and after our trip

You may recall we went up to Vancouver in March for the Sevens.  Someone took our picture on the first day and it is being used on the Candian Sevens website for next year's tournament.  We're famous!

That's it for us.

Christmas is coming real fast!

Stay safe and we'll talk to you soon!