Had a blast this past weekend skiing in Telluride with Khaled, Big Guy and Sach.

The trip got off to a rough start. Met over at Khaled's place a little after 4am Thursday morning to share a cab to Newark for our 6am flight. After watching Khaled struggle with the check-in kiosk for a while, the United rep comes over, checks my boarding pass (that I had printed the night before) and informs us that we were at the wrong airport. Our flight was out of La Guardia! F**********K! We had everything but a big red flashing sign telling us our flight was from LGA, but we managed to screw it up anyway.

After mocking us a little bit, the United rep was actually very helpful and got us on an 8am flight out of Newark. With plenty of time to kill, Khaled and I roamed the airport. We entertained ourselves by trying to name all 48 continental states on an Air Tran route map. We got four states wrong, and even had to call Tracy for help with Nebraska. She asked, "Don't you both have masters degrees?". Not even 7am and already twice mocked! :-)

The flight out was pretty good, although I can't say that I enjoyed the 18-seat prop plane from Denver to Telluride. They actually had to boot one of the passengers because the plane was overweight. The only good thing was that our screw up actually put us on the same flight as Sach so we met up with him in Denver.

Once we got to Telluride the altitude really knocked us for a loop. Shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, headache. I really felt like the old man that I am, and we hadn't even hit the slopes yet!

The house we stayed in was very sweet. Access to the slopes was just a 100 yd walk that put you right in the middle of one of the nicer runs. Of course, 100yds in ski boots blows, especially at the end of the day. Mucho thanks to Taco for hooking us up with the house, even though he couldn't come at the last minute.

The skiing itself was awesome. We had perfect weather in the high 40s both days. On the first day, we skied down to the lifts from our house and were already sweating. I had to ditch one of my shirts and my scarf in a locker. I was plenty warm with just a long-sleeved shirt and my non-down jacket. The fact that the slopes weren't crowded was also really nice. Sometimes it felt like we had the place to ourselves.

This was only my 5th time skiing, and the last time was 12 years ago, so I was a bit nervous hitting the slopes for the first time. I picked it up pretty quickly though and actually managed to avoid a wipeout the entire time. My legs definitely took a beating though. I actually cut the 2nd day of skiing a bit short because my quads were en fuego.

Between the skiing, altitude and time zone difference, we were in bed fairly early each night, but we had some nice meals in the town of Telluride and it was great to hang out with the boys and catch up.

More pictures from Khaled.