On my spring break two friends and I traveled to the state of Colorado.
We drove 2500 miles round trip in a 2WD Nissan Xterra, spent 400 bucks each, snowboarded 3 days, did the tourist thing for 2 days and drove for two days. It was the best trip of my life.


Pics + story...

We left on sunday morning on the 12th. After getting out of dallas and getting the tunes going, the driving was really picking up... until we got to the panhandle. There was SO much wind blowing east, it was blowing the car to the right really hard and was taxing on the driver. Good thing it wasn't me.
Check out the red dust flying in the wind. It was wild.

That crap was blowing like 50mph+, we stopped for gas and I nearly lost my shirt!

We hit the Colordo boarder just before night fall.

It was about that time that the windshield wiper fluid motor stopped working. Right there on the state line it just quit. Well for those who don't know, you can't survive the winter/spring in Colorado without windshield wiper fluid. We hit Pueblo I think around 9 and it was snowing. We started freaking out. "LOOK SNOW!" "WHOO HOO". Well the more north we traveled the worse it got. The roads started getting icy and wet, which was then sprayed on the windshield from trucks in front of us. Pretty soon the wipers smeared it all over and visibility(IN THE ICE) was pretty much gone. I drove 35mph up I-25 for like 2.5 hours to Denver. We then found a Best Western and slept-not in a room where you would think, in the truck(pics to come).
Upon waking up we headed to wally world for some food supplys(french bread, goldfish, dr pepper, ravioli, etc) then down 70 to loveland ski resort.
The drive...
















Beautiful!

After falling for a whole day we were driveing out of the mountains through snow storms. Traffic was crawling so I decided to take the exit and check out some of the tiny mountain town action.

Some old mining stuff...





Here is a random chimney in the middle of a field.


We saw this road that is pretty steep and I figured it would be a good idea to try to drive up it. We made it just past that truck and started sliding backwards. Oh well.



After drivering throught the town I decided that I wanted to get out and take a pic of the side of a mountain, we were on a two lane road just outside of the little town so I pulled off the road-because we were stopping. Well when I got back in the truck and started to continue on our journey I started driveing back on to the road and the truck barely moved in the snow. "Hmmm" I said to my self, kinda like driving in mud in 2wd. Gotta get some momentum. So I went in reverse then drive. The road was about 3 inches higher than the field we were in and it was covered in ice. Well I just bounced off the side of the road, not able to get on it. "Crap" well the road is 6 inches from the truck so how stuck could we be? After about 20 min of back and forth I had worked myself to about 4 feet from the road. Damn, Tim you drive I will push. After about 10 min of pushing I was like Man, we are really stuck! Just in time for the sun to set too. Fine, I walked back into the little town to a garage where they had a tow truck. He tells me that he has a $50 minimum even though I was one minute up the road and 4 feet from the road. SCREW THAT! Walked back to the truck gathering small branches and twigs along the way. Told the others to gather twigs while I shoveled the loose snow out of the way with my hands. *Start Clock* we gathered and shoveled, and gathered and shoveled.














Time to start pushing.(and praying)


You can sort of see the road from here. We are only about 4 feet from the edge.


Push.
Brake.
Reposition.
Push.
Push.
Brake.
Reposition.
Push.
Rest.
Push.
And finnaly...











FREEDOM!


I swear I didn't really think it would work. But after that moment we were reborn again and became TRUE MEN!!!!


:b anger::ban ger:

After we got back into the truck I called the wrecker guy and said "Hi this is the guy who got stuck right down the road. Yea. Listen we got out, we got unstuck so you can sleep easy tonight. We aren't still stuck."

I told him how we did it and we both had a good laugh.
*Stop Clock* Wow that took two freaking hours!
All this after out first day of snowboarding. Sore, exhausted, victorious, we dove to Colorado Springs and crashed at a motel 6.

 

Sucks that the tow driver wouldn't cut you a break, but you got out anyway. Sounds like a cool trip, great pics too.

 

Wake up at Motel 6 in Colorado Springs for a day of resting and sight seeing.

The Crew:

Boris-The Russian


Timmy-Mr. Cool


Me-Not a morining person.


Our Room...


My bed-It was my turn to sleep up front, The other two just leaned the seat back but not me...Ninja Ingenuity


The nice view out the window at Motel 6

 

lookin' good chris

 

We took about 1000000 pics of awsome mountains.
Here are some pics while we where driving around Manitou Springs looking for stuff to do.





Mountains kick ass.


We went to garden of the gods to play around for a while.


Crazy tree!


I bet he was the first to do that.








Ascension












We walked along a hikeing path along the north end of the park trying to spot rams that were supposed to be there. Instead we saw something colorful on the horizon and investigated.


Turns out to be some kind of old fountain or something that had been all painted up and skated. Bummer we didn't have our boards.



It was in the middle of nowhere, kind of crazy.

 

I know I crack up everytime I see that pic, I just had to post it!

 

After all the horsing around down south we headed back up to Denver then to the mountains again to get a jump start on the next day of boarding. We went to a board shop that rents gear and sells discount lift tickets and got all hooked up. Then we went to the little mountain town of Georgetown. Only 12 miles from love. Getting all our gear two keep over night for two days presented a problem. No room in the back to sleep! So when we got to Georgetown we went to the only place that was open at the time(10pm) and asked for some string or rope so we could tie up our gear above our heads. No luck. The other gas station, hot checkout lady but no rope. Bummed we head back to the truck and pass by these boxes laying beside the first gas station.



Does this look like trash or treasure?
I think the fact that it was windshield wiper fluid was sort of like a sign.



It was all Tims idea.







Good job Timmy! We are MEN.



That stuff was SO strong. Later on in the trip Tim suspended his whole body buy that shrinkwrap. Those of you who need a home depot be damned!

 

you guys are so cheap.... i LOVE it

the person in the front shouldve snipped the shrink wrap as an alarm clock

 

Some shots from the top of the bunny hill at love.


It took a while before I could get Tim to go to the Basin(bigger stuff)


When we did it was pretty damn sweet!


I-70 goes right through the mountain that Loveland is on. There are trails right over the road.





I didn't get very many shots of the boarding because I was too busy boarding. Now I wish I got more.

 

I will have to post up the rest of the pics later. This is all I have on this memory card the other isn't with me. This is only half of the trip so stay tuned.

 

Oh yea, I forgot to mention the only way to see those days that it was wet on the road was staying away from the rear of trucks and tossing some water on the windshield with a waterbottle. IT SUCKED!!!

Here you can see Boris the russian handing me the water.
You can also see the in dash DVD player that we had.



We had plenty of tunes and southpark to play on the player. There was even a night that we went to blockbuster and rented Transporter 2 and ate dominoes. It was sweet.

 

You guys are awesome. That's more hardcore than any road trip I've ever taken. Good job.

 

Haha, thats awesome. You skate too! Thats freakin awesome, next time your down here (if ever) you need to bring your boards and ill take you around skating.

 

You've got a deal! Tim and I are moving up there around June!!!

 

be ready to "wheel" woohoooo

 

Sweet pics. Glad you guys had fun.

 

awesome pics and story.. yall are badass.. i cant wait for the 2nd half.

 

Wait no more!


This was the final day(and best) of snowboarding for us.
Don't I look happy?


The russian eye is a freaky thing. The camera caught its true color through those clear glasses.


The basin of loveland. Basically there are two mountains, the valley(bunny slopes) and the basin(the good stuff)


This is also the basin, check out those lifts. All the way to the top!


Warming up on the bunny.


Going up the big one. Lift 2 takes like 8 minutes to get up. It is huge.


I love this stuff!


Our car is two miles over that edge...





My new house?


Loveland pass. Back country riding.


This was at the top of lift 9. Seems like we are on top of the Rockys. You can see for MILES. I think that is keystone in the background.


Breathtaking.


Ready to go down?





I should be a model. No?





After taking these pics I went to the terrain park to meet up with Eric(Rocket) for a little shreddin. We was flyin down this mountain and launching massive jumps that were bigger than anything we would try. I tried to fallow and instead fed the ground to my butt. Eric is a really awsome guy, super nice and a good boarder. Thanks to our beloved yotatech he came out to meet with us and do some boarding!

 

Boris wanted to stay at the bunny hill all day and didn't come to the basin with Tim and I. Being our last day, we tried to stay out as long as possible(especially since they close at 4). We didn't get off the mountain untill 4:30 and we still had to make our way back to the valley parking lot. We finally got to the truck around 4:45 to see Boris standing at the truck in a nearly empty parking lot. Oops, I forgot I had the keys to the truck. Boris had been standing there for about 40 minutes waiting for us, and he was pissed. It is pretty funny thinking back on it. Actually it was pretty funny then too. I should have snapped a pic.


After pilling into the truck and feasting on french bread, dr pepper, and mega m&ms, we headed back to return our gear.




As we were returning our gear we got in touch with Ric and set up plans to meet up for some food. Ric is definatly one of the coolest/nicest guys and I feel privileged to have met him. We met at Beau Jos Pizza in Arvada for some great pizza. I think we were there talking for like 2 hours or something. During which he offered multiple times to let us crash at his place, fter a while we agreed. I felt bad a first but he kept reashuring that it was totally cool. He showed us pics of his awsome Colorado 4wheeling adventures, and we showed him some vids of us falling down the mountains. Ric is a bad ass dude who I am looking forward to wheeling with when I move up there. Thanks to yotatech!!!




Rics bad ass rig. Pic does it absolutly no justice.


A nice shower and good nights sleep. Oh yea.


Thanks again Ric!