We might be older, but it doesn't mean we act that way.

The amazing Indian Springs

My first running photoshoot thanks
to Tai. Wade proves who needs
gloves when you have socks.....?

Without a doubt one of the things that makes me the luckiest person is the my group of Dayton and beyond friends, The Crew. This group of 15+ guys (yes, of course its all dudes; we learned at a young age, "Girls on one side, guys on the other!"), most of whom I have known for well over 20 years (some since I was 6), are honestly like brothers to me. Unfortunately, we only get to see each other a couple of times a year now. But one of the reasons why I know I am so lucky to have these friends is that no matter how long it has been since we have seen each other, it feels like no time has passed at all....for better or worse.

Another shot from the run, showing
the amazing Adam house in
the background.

Fortunately, this past weekend I was able to see a part of The Crew in Crested Butte, Colorado... ahh, the sunshine state. For the avid AoaNM followers, you might remember a similar trip took place 5 years ago (Crested Butte). This trip had some returning characters, several missing, and one new one. Living in New Mexico, I had the pleasure of driving up to western Colorado. I really love that drive, especially southern Colorado. Of course, I left work late, so most of the drive was in the dark. Driving through northern NM in the dark is pretty surreal. You pass another car maybe every 30 minutes or so. You drive along a perfectly straight road and the world dissolves into black at the limit of your headlights. Those 30 minutes feel like hours. If not for the dashes on the road, I would have no way of knowing if I am actually moving. Then in southern Colorado, you begin to drive through these amazing little towns. Each seem like isolated islands of civilization, knowing nothing of the others. But each town has this strange feeling, almost drawing me to pull over and settle down in this completely foreign town. I managed to resist the urge of relocating my life to some random small Colorado town and pulled into CB late that night, with just a couple hairy moments narrowly avoiding the hundreds of deer and elk hanging out along the road the last 20 miles of the drive.

The money shot! Thanks Tai for making me feel famous.

When a normal person thinks of a group of guys in their young 30's hanging out at a top ski destinations, with an amazing base of snow, there are certain activities that come to mind, namely skiing. Other than my half-day spent cross country skiing, nobody went skiing. In our defense, several of the guys went snowmobiling. I did not because I prefer human-powered activities (that excuse was met with groans from the other guys and "I knew you would say that.") No, we spent the weekend playing King of Tokyo board game, cooking ridiculous meals, playing capture the flag/snow ball fight (which soon devolved into our typical fight about someone somehow cheating), building the most epic sledding route known to man (at least in our opinion), and of course making fun of Ross and Blake as often as we could.

This is how most of the weekend
looked, us playing Kings of Tokyo

Again, taking the normal person's perspective, this weekend sounds like something 12-year olds would do. Considering our behavior while doing all of these activities, 12-year olds is probably about right, if not generous. For the benefit of everyone, I won't go into details of this behavior, you will just have to take my word for it. I will say, as a follow-up to the last CB trip, we repeated the food challenge with Blake. We may have been a little ambitious on the spice, but needless to say he lost again. This time, the punishment involved a midnight, full nude trip down the sledding route. How I wish we had a video! He set a record time, nailing each of the sharp turns perfectly. Although, stopping the sled in the deep snow may have been a little cold for him. Without a doubt, it was a fantastic weekend. I don't regret not skiing; any time spent skiing would have meant less time I could have spent with these guys (well, I could have done with less Blake time.....just kidding....kind of).

Ahh, I am hilarious

But, that wasn't the end of my weekend. After leaving CB, I drove west, heading over to Utah. Again, this was an awesome drive. Western Colorado is pretty awesome to drive through, however, efficient driving it is not. I fortunately was not in a hurry because the winding roads and hairpin turns with hundreds of feet drop-offs is not conducive to making good time. The craziest part of the drive is crossing the Colorado-Utah border. Leaving Colorado you work your way through mountain passes then all of a sudden you hit a martian landscape, aka Utah. Colorado has a ton of sharp, jagged peaks, Utah has rounded blobs of red rock.

Kevin climbing hard and looking badass while
doing it, as usual.

I was heading to Indian Springs to meet up with Kevin and Becky. Kevin is known from many earlier posts (e.g. NH nICE, Ol' Man Wilson, you are a grumpy SOB, and many more, including the slideshow from our eastern Sierras trip). I got into Indian Springs late, so this part of the excursion only included half of a day of climbing. While I only went up two routes, it was awesome to see Kevin and Becky and to see Kevin climb (while he was quite unhappy with his climbing, I was of course pretty impressed). Indian Springs is also very impressive. Considering the surrounding martial landscape, Indian Springs feels like another world.

So then the long drive back home. I won't go into details here. Like I feel now, I was quite tired at this point in the trip and just wanted to go to bed.

Sorry for the long-winded rambling post, but let's be honest, that is kind of my M.O. Until next time....

Tai's snowmobiling attire.

Umm, no idea and no comment. It is Blake....

Wouldn't be a proper weekend without male on male "wrestling"

Pretty standard scene, I am the first one to fall asleep.

Hard to beat this view from the porch

Just a couple normal 32-year olds

Ross pouring a beer in Tony's mouth while caressing his head? Again, no clue and no comment. 

A little FIFA action before I got pissed that we got scored on and they wouldn't skip the celebration, resulting in me turning off the system. I have outgrown most of competitiveness, I promise!

P.S. Photo credit for all Colorado pictures goes to the fantastic Tai-Jen X Chen!