We had a fantastic time in Colorado as we tore up Copper Mountain. I am going to try and give you a travel log of the trip, but I shift gears from short/consice to long winded and back too much, so I’ll leave a lot fo stuff in the extended entry sections. Click to read of in you want.

Day One

I’m sitting now on a new bus in the middle of Arkansas listening to Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry”. “New” because or old one had difficulties. Everything started out fine. Better than fine, actually. Everyone got to the church in plenty of time, no long Q&A time, and we left a little earlier than I anticipated. I thought we might end up making too good of time on the road. But I should have known better. We’d gone through Memphis and were approaching Little Rock. People were beginning to ask about supper plans. We were nearing some supper places about an hour up the road. All of a sudden a terrible racket happened on the right side of the bus. Bad noise around the wheel. I wondered if someone’s luggage had fallen out and gotten tangled up or something. But it was just a blowout. Two tires were gone. Shredded. What to do, what to do?

Our drivers called back to New Albany and they were going to get a service crew to come from LRock to fix our flats (shreds?) So in the mean time, we sit on the side of the interstate. After close to an hour, they figure out that we’re losing air pressure. My first thought is that this isn’t an airplane, but it had to do with the break lines. That can’t be fixed in a timely fashion. So we have to wait on another bus to take a 3-hour trip to get us. So we sit. And we sit and sit and sit. After about 30 minutes it felt like we’d been sitting for about 5 hours. The new bus finally got there and it was a better bus: bigger, nicer, and newer. Now I have a full two seats to myself instead of sitting w/ other people. Not that I don’t like sitting w/ other people, but I can’t sleep on a bus well to begin with, but I’m really uncomfortable trying to sit quietly while everyone else is asleep and I’m just sitting there.

So we’re on our way now. I think most people are asleep. No one’s had an official supper, though lots of people have snacked. We’ll stop at a service station somewhere up the road, but we have to really book it on the road. We have a 5:30 ski fitting time in Copper Mountain. We’ll see if we can make it or not. But that’s been the first ‘day’ of the trip so far. I can now see city lights all around me, but no real clue as to where I am. That’s probably better anyway, right now.