What's He Saying?

So...i'm reading through my gym induction booklet (albeit months after my induction) and i come across this happy fellow on the inside cover.

In a rather blatent attempt at lowering the tone here, i have removed the boring weight loss comment from the box, and invite you to offer a more suitable caption. A Soup Teapot for the winner!

The Return

So...it's been 8 days since i returned from the States, and have only just plugged in my PC and jumped aboard the blogmobile (still love that, Matt). Shameful, i know, but here goes with an account of my travels...

Skiing was, without doubt, fantastic. First some non-snow words.
Colorado was my third visit to the USA. I truly love visiting America. I love that it's soooo different yet so similar to the UK in many ways: I've travelled 7000 miles yet i can still order a Subway without looking at the menu. 'Americanisation' may bring some nasty side-effects with it, but im happy to ignore them and marvel that the place i currently live is becoming more like the place i love to visit.
My journey comprised a 10 hour flight to Denver with a 3 hour connection to the ski resort. I enjoyed this because Colorado is obviously not all about the snow, and it was great to see some genuine American country. I saw my first tumble-weed...not actually tumbling. Very disappointed - i expected to hear the soft breathing of the wind as it rolled past, but no it was stuck in a fence. We drove through several mining towns that looked 100% stereotypical: Saloon bars etc - I do like when the movies look real.

There were frequent signs right through the bus journey:
"Use Caution! Watch for wildlife." - afterall this is bear and deer country. I couldnt help but feel the sign was misleading though: how am i meant to drive with caution if i'm observing a Grisly through my field glasses??

Beaver Creek was pretty awesome - one hell of a resort. It's fair to say, the Americans sure know how to do ski resorts! a few pics to follow when i get them back from Dan. all the paths and squares in the village are heated to stop freezing, and they print new maps daily with an overnight grooming report - so we know whick slopes have been groomed, and what the forecast is etc. The slopes run right into the village, and there are escalators to take you to the lower level village square with an ice rink in the centre.
There are 147 trails and runs to ski in total at Beaver Creek, with another 197 runs at Vail resort, which we also visited. That's a combined skiing area of 8000 acres (a lot) You could probably avoid skiing the same run twice if you tried for the whole 2 weeks! Some of these runs were incredible to ski. Providing Dan makes no comment i'll say i really felt my skiing came on immensely.

I believe we "Apres'd it to the max" on several occasions too. Some fantastic food, good beers and great laughs. Dan and i managed $140 (~£80) on cocktails one afternoon, still in full piste attire. Quite the afternoon, i'm sure Dan will agree! If i'm on MSN then do ask me for the videos - well worth a watch.

Ok i'm gonna round this mighty beast of a blog off now. I think my thanks must be mentionned to Dan and crew for such a good ~2 weeks. I met a lot of really cool people and had some memorable times.

A couple of pictures below are in order, just to push the boundary of how much space a single entry can consume...

There was a little more snow than the top-left image (view from the flat) suggests. The slopes head round to the left, but one of the bump runs directly above the ice rink is called Lupin - conquered!

Looking down on Beaver Creek Village. Again spot the lack of snow - in fact we left the day before the season ended! blogger has limited it to 1024px wide, so no larger image at present