The Blake’s 2017 ski trip took place in America, at a rather tumultuous time in American history. Trump was inaugurated as the new President on the very day we were flying over to the US of A from Australia. Our flight was delayed in Sydney by five hours, so it was midnight by the time we checked in to our hotel in Denver and the streets were dark and quiet. But during breakfast the next morning, we could hear a lot of chanting voices outside the hotel and realised we were right in the middle of the ‘Women’s March’ in Denver. The shops were all shut, the buses weren’t running until the afternoon, and we couldn’t get out of the hotel without finding ourselves amongst all the happy, pink-hatted people waving their banners; some of which were so funny and creative. Rodney and I ended up being part of the largest single-day demonstration in USA history and two of a calculated 4.8 million marchers world wide; not quite the start we had expected to our ski holiday!
After our two nights in Denver, Bobby and Shiho flew in from New York, so we met up with them at the airport and hopped into their hire car to drive out to our huge apartment in Breckenridge. Maxime and Aurore flew in later from France and followed on in their hire car, arriving just in time for dinner together on our first night at the ski resort.
And thus followed days of hurtling down mountains, sore bodies, age reminders and an awful lot of fun. We skied at Breckenridge and Vail and Rodney also skied at Keystone. We sat in one of the three big hot tubs every evening and ate out every night, apart from one when I was too sore to move and opted to stay on the sofa ‘enjoying’ ice packs on my back. It was sad saying goodbye to our youthful foreign ski buddies at the end of the week, especially as they were driving on to ski at Aspen, but we had to be back in Sydney for English friends who were flying in for a holiday with us. But then on the other hand, we were both a bit relieved when our plane took off from Los Angeles airport. America seemed terribly unsettled and troubled, and I had a constant feeling of foreboding while we were there. I think we’ll give the USA a bit of a miss for a while.
