Days 127 to 133 - Shkee Shkhool

Author - Grant
Based In – Taos, New Mexico

Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157615520501886/

Relax, we’re back. How’ve you been anyway? Did you lose weight? You look great. Now that’s quite enough about you – back to us.

We’ve been living in the relative lap of luxury for the past week which, for us, means that our accommodation had more than one liveable room. In order to get some space in the budget boxes we usually frequent, one of us is forced to retire to the bathroom but our “executive” room in the pueblo themed Sagebush (think Mexican restaurant circa 1973) had a whole separate living room meaning that we could have a week off from living like the grandparents from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. In addition to having a living room, we were also blessed with his ‘n’ hers bathrooms (although the shower didn’t work in one so, by default, that became the number-two-orium) and a fireplace with slightly dodgy ventilation that required both the front window and back door to be open which resulted in more icy breeze than the fire could negate but that didn’t stop us lighting it most nights. But I’m saving the best ‘til last – one of the bathrooms had a padded toilet seat. At first I thought this was to reduce the dreaded cheek-to-chair chill factor but by day seven it became clear that it more of a medical necessity…but more of that later.

So the reason for being in Taos for a whole week was to allow us to rip up the slopes but a visit to the doctor for Kate on the first day confirmed that she should be resting her foot rather than throwing it down mountains. Still, resting is something that she excels at and she still doesn’t understand the irony of reading a book on climbing Mount Everest when she didn’t expend more than 30 calories per day. Actually, she did go to water aerobics one day but apparently she was the youngest participant by a clear five decades – from above, the scene must have looked like a wet ash tray.

Anyway, this left me free to snowboard at my leisure in Taos Ski Valley which isn’t the biggest resort in the world, but it is one of the toughest with over half of the runs classified as black or double diamond. It turns out that this is the first season they have allowed snowboarders to join the skiers and it really feels that way as the mountain is clearly set up for skiers. For a start, some of the mountain isn’t even accessible to boarders unless you’re willing to hike…and where’s the fun in that? Furthermore, anything black or above is guaranteed to be plastered with more terrifying moguls than 16th Century Mongolia. And to top it all off, it is well known that this mountain is incredibly steep meaning that a blue here is probably a black anywhere else in the world and, as a result, even the greens are littered with fallen comrades. So after a few days of punishing snowboarding, I decided to fulfil a resolution and give skiing a bash. As such, with two days left in Taos, I enrolled for a one day lesson hoping that it would teach me the basics on the baby slopes in order to attack the mountain properly on my last day. Unfortunately the lesson was like every other group lesson I’ve ever had the misfortune to be a part of – painfully slow and a complete waste of time. I knew I should have gone with my original plan of hiring a pair of skis, asking someone how to put them on then throwing myself off the top of the mountain but Kate assured me that this was irresponsible.

What I did learn is that anyone who tells you that skiing is harder to learn than snowboarding is a complete liar as it involves much less falling because there’s a whopping four points of contact with the snow (two skis, two poles) rather than just one with boarding. Still, it’s clearly not without risk and I did manage a fairly spectacular fall down a steep mogully slope that left my skis, poles and goggles some 20 metres uphill from my final resting place and it was this incident that made me realise the real purpose of our room’s padded toilet seat. For the rest of my final day I was a little worried that I had suffered concussion as I saw a 6 foot chicken and a 300lb bunny rabbit alongside me on the slopes but it turns out there was a scavenger hunt in progress and these characters were part of the competition.

Taos nightlife is fairly non-existent which further hammers home the fact that this is seen as a serious skier’s mountain. In fact, there’s not a single lively bar and evening entertainment revolves around eating. I can cope with that. The trouble is that there’s a also a lack of decent eating establishments and the fact that the Applebees parking lot is packed to capacity from 5pm every night speaks volumes. In fact, by night four, Kate was positively excited to visit here but either popularity or stupidity resulted in them running out of chicken which meant that at least 75% of their menu was missing…just the excuse I was looking for to have the massive burger I desired and, quite frankly, deserved. A trip to Pizza Hut (a brand that I ashamedly love) turned out to be even more disappointing as the salad bar was more bare that a Penthouse centrefold and the thin crust pizza we ordered had the consistency and taste of a water biscuit topped with ketchup. Still, we did have a couple of good meals courtesy of two local restaurants. The super-friendly Graham’s Grill dished up some outstanding calamari, lamb and trout and Hunan Chinese whipped up some killer Sichuan Beef and Curried Chicken. I guess the moral of the story is to stay out of the chains and go local.

So that’s how we managed to while away an entire week in Taos – boarding, skiing, eating and choking on smoke. It did, however, give us time to do some quality trip planning and, as a result, we’ve modified the route. In the short-term, we’re heading west into Utah to see monument valley, south into Arizona to see the Grand Canyon and west into San Diego where we hope to bask in the sun for a while. The long term plan after that is to drift up the west coast, eventually hitting Seattle and Vancouver. Then it’s back towards New York although exactly what happens then is still a mystery.