Getting Lost

My cousin’s apparently figured out that I have a website and so you may see comments from them and think- Who are these crazy people?

Well- first of all- they are from Oklahoma, and secondly they are related to me, so that makes them double-crazy. If you think I am nuts… well, we won’t go there.

My cousin Chanc posted that I needed to post a story about the time we went to Colorado to go skiing- and got lost. This happened before I started blogging so I can’t just pull this from the archives and repost it, however, I feel like I have told this story in pieces here before.

The year was 1999. Let me take you back to that year for a moment. My dad was stockpiling groceries for the Year 2000 fallout. Being a child that lived through The Great Depression, he always prepares for a crisis- I mean really prepares. We had enough canned vegetables and toothpaste and toilet paper to last us- and when I say us, I mean our entire family of 5. I could write a book just about this alone, but I won’t.

So, being the rebel that I am- I thought- well, since this may be my last year on earth why not go Skiing!

Loading up my 10 year old pickup truck- (which had at the time a transmission that would not allow me to put the truck into 4th gear about 80% of the time) I drove through Oklahoma and picked up my two cousins- Chanc and Tony and we made the 18 hour drive to Colorado. We followed some friends of mine- Steve Hildebrand and Adam Watkins- to make a really long story short- Steve and Adam, my cousins and I, and another group of friends all met up at Winter Park Ski Resort where we were supposed to go skiing all day and then go to Adam and Steve’s friend’s cabin. Did you get all that? Yeah, it’s hard for me to follow as well.

Skiing was great, Tony and Chanc were quick studies on the snowboards- I remember telling them on the way up the ski lift that getting off the lift the first time was the hardest part- not for them- I was the only one that fell.

After a great day of learning and snowboarding, we met up with some friends for Dinner at an Amazing Pizza place. The thing was, Adam and Steve left a note on my truck with directions to the Cabin, since I was teaching my cousin’s how to snowboard, we didn’t ski as a group- Adam and Steve left way before us and so we decided to go and eat Pizza with a group of my friends that live in Colorado and skied with us some that day.

So we go and eat Pizza- Tony was feeling sick so he stayed in the truck, but Chanc and I ate, and ate, and had a great time. The problem was that it was pretty late and very dark and my directions to the Cabin were a little shady and so as we started trying to find the place my truck started to overheat, my windows fogged up, at one point I went up this steep hill thinking that our Cabin was at the top of the hill- it wasn’t- and I had to back down and I couldn’t see! I was Furious- no- LIVID, literally in a rage- to this day I have never been so mad in my life. I remember yelling out F%$K!! And I never cuss- at least not out loud, especially not in front of my cousins who have known me to be a good Christian my whole life. But in my defense, I was stuck up a hill, in the freezing cold, with an overheating truck, two friends that had left me a crappy map, and two cousins that I was responsible for, with very little money to be spending on a hotel- but that is what we did, we got a hotel that night and I got up early the next morning and started trying to find Adam and Steve while Tony and Chanc stayed in the hotel- that way if I got mad again, I could get mad by myself.

The truck overheated again, but this time I knew I was close- the sun had come out and so I could see some stuff- and so I walked about 2 miles in the cold and found Adam and Steve. Unfortunately, I needed to stay in their cabin with their friends and so I didn’t berate them, or kill them, which is what I wanted to do.

All in all it was a great learning experience. Chanc and Tony and I got to ski for 3 days instead of four. We didn’t get free lift tickets like we thought we were going to get, we had to pay for that hotel, but when it was all said and done, we had a great time.

We even got stopped by a cop once with 4 people in the front seat of my truck and we didn’t get a ticket!

When I dropped my cousin’s off at my Aunt Jan’s house she had made a big pan of her famous fudge and she let me have it all! Let’s just say it kept me awake all the way home.

The year 2000 came while in Colorado and the world didn’t end. The old blue truck made it- up and down those mountains even without 4th gear. And I was proud of myself for being able to drive to Colorado and find things- as from this story you can tell- I have a habit of getting lost.