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All Aboard - Well it’s that wonderful time of year again, MUSICFEST in Steamboat Springs, CO.  Krissy, Danielle (my co-worker) and I depart Springfield at approx. 5PM. We head into lifeless Kansas and stop just outside of Topeka for a refuel. At this point we have already hit snow on the ground.  About 8 boring hours and a few refuels later we reach Denver.  We ventured on down I-70 to Silverthorne, and took CO-9 north through the continental divide.  We reach the town of Kremmling and stopped at one of the many familiar Kum and Go’s along our way.  The last strech took us through Rabbit Ears Pass just before sunrise. We rolled into Steamboat about 7:00 AM. 

Saturday January 5^th 2008We had arrived to Steamboat ahead of the rest of our party.  My friend Matt and his friends Katie and Jackie were supposed to be about 3 hours behind us, however we got a call from him, and unfortunately the tranny on his truck went out in western Kansas and they were waiting for a repair shop to open.  They ended up leaving the truck to get fixed and renting a van.  My other co-worker Brad was flying into Hayden, CO (about 20 mins away) the next day.  Krissy, Danielle, and I checked into our condo (Storm Meadows @ Christie Base,) and then went to get registered for MusicFest. We then ventured downtown for some shopping and to eat at Johnny B. Goods (a neat little 50’s diner.) By the late afternoon it was starting to snow pretty hard and we were beginning to wonder if Matt was going to make it in that night. Luckily they made it into Steamboat at about 7PM just before they closed Rabbit Ears Pass due to the heavy snow.  Matt, Katie, and I ventured to the Liquor and Grocery stores to stock up on the essentials. By this time most of the other musicfesters had come into town and had the same idea as us.  The grocery store shelves were rapidly disappearing as hundreds of Texans bought everything in sight.  Apparently Texans love classic yellow mustard because the 3 shelves that once held it were completely wiped out.  We got back to the condo, got situated and cracked open some brews.  We decided to dare the weather and go bar-hopping, which turned out to be a bad idea as once again all of the other musicfesters had the same idea and the bars were 1in1out. 

Sunday January 6^th 2008

This was the first day of skiing as well as the first day for concerts. We hit the slopes about 10AM, while Danielle went to Ski school.  This year I bought some Skiblades and new boots to carve the slopes with.  The comfort fit boots are so much nicer than the rentals it’s not even funny.  Krissy and I met back up with Danielle at 1:30 for the first concert of the MusicFest. This was the popular outdoors show featuring Wade Bowen and Jack Ingram. At 30 degrees it wasn’t nearly as cold as last year (-1), but still a little brisk for an outdoor concert.  Brad got in to town about 2:30PM and joined us.  He had some bad luck on the way out as the airline lost his bag and his snowboard, however his luck started to turn within the first 5 minutes of being in steamboat as he found $6 in cash laying on top of the trash can. We took the find as an omen and immediately went to the beer tent and bought the first of many delicious Shinerbock’s (the main beer sponsor of the festival.) We later went over to the Bear River bar and drank the night away listening to Bonnie Bishop, Adam Hood, Ryan Turner, Ryan James, and hanging out with Brady Black from the Randy Rogers Band. 

Monday January 7^th, 2008       

We hit the slopes hard in the morning taking Danielle up to some of the lower mountain green runs.  We went back to the condo after lunch and got ready to go hit the big tent for Ryan Bingham, Jason Boland, and Cross Canadian Ragweed.  After the concert we tried to go catch the last part of another concert in the Grand ballroon, but the line was one in one out and there were about 200 people ahead of us so we gave up and went back to the condo to finish the night off.

Tuesday January 8^th, 2008

Krissy, Danielle, Brad and I went to the top of the mountain and planned our trail route for the day.  We decided to split up and meet up at thunderhead lodge with Mat, Katie and Jackie for lunch. After lunch Danielle and Krissy went back to the condo and Brad and I decided to go do a few more blue runs to end the day. By this time it was getting late and ice was starting to build up on some of the runs.  Our last run was Vagabond, Brad was ahead of me by about 50 yards and I was about ½ way down the last portion when I caught a glimpse of someone (later to be a 15 year old Romanian kid) coming up on my left side.  Apparently he was out of control due to the ice and clipped my back left ski, causing me to either A, bite the dust and fall to my right side down the rest of the hill, or B bear hug the person and take them down with me. I chose option B and fell on top of him giving me some padding for the fall and slowing him down considerably.  We both slide about 20-30 feet and got up and to everyone’s amazement were ok to continue down the mountain.  Brad and I met back up with the others in the condo, took showers and got ready for some more concert action.  This night was the acoustic set which featured 3 sets of artists each doing 3-4 acoustic songs of their choice. 

Wednesday January 9^th, 2008

This was the last day of MusicFest, Brad and I suited up for the slopes in the morning. After going down a few preview runs, it was apparent that the wreck from the day before had a bigger impact on my hip than I had thought, so I decided to take a break from skiing and let Brad battle the slopes for himself.  I met back with Krissy and Danielle at the Slopeside Grill for lunch then onto the Cross Canadian Ragweed Jam Session. I have found this concert to be one of the most interesting of all due to the randomness of it, you never know who is going to jump up on stage or what random songs they are going to play.  At one point I counted 13 different artists jamming out to a variety of songs.   If you ever go I highly recommend this show.  We went back to the condo to meet up with the rest of the group and then traveled back to the tent to catch the concert we had all been waiting for The Randy Rogers band.  I think we all agreed that this concert was one if not the best of the entire week.  The raw energy coming from these guys was amazing, and the crowd was definitely into every song. Krissy, Brad, and I finished up the night at Bear River again and saw Corb Lund and Max Stalling. One last surprise was running into Jason Boland and getting out picture with him.    

Thursday January 10^th, 2008

Today we packed up our stuff, dug out vehicle out of the 24″ of accumulated snow, took Brad to the Hayden airport, and headed back east to Springfield.  We made pretty good time taking us about 13.5 hours with stops for food and gas.  Overall it was another great trip and I think we are all ready to sign up for next year, if you are reading this and would like to go next year we are recruiting new troops, let me know!

Check out snowcreek for your self www.skisnowcreek.com

3-2-07
Hello all, hope everyone is ready for spring, I know I am.  I can’t wait for the weather to warm up so I can start fishing and hiking.  My bud Rance has a place on the lake now, so we are planning some Crappie&Beer weekends.  He came down last weekend for his b-day. I took him to the Snorty on Friday to see the Mark Chapman Band.  If any of you haven’t seen these guys I highly recommend you do so soon.  (My co-worker Bart is the drummer so if you see him tell him you know me!)   Sat. we went to DA Bears game and watched them whip up on Drake.  We ended the night with plenty of beer and drunken Wii bowling!  
 
2-11-07
Boland rocked the Snorty Small Room!  Everytime I see Roger Ray play steel guitar I realize more and more how talented he really is.  Jason did a great job entertaining the crowd.  I was also impressed with his cover of Copperhead Road.  Here are a few pics I took from the show.
2-5-07
Jason Boland is coming to the Snorty Saturday 2/10, get your tickets quick
this will sell out!  I’m looking to update some of the visuals on this site in the near future. Any suggestions?
1-24-07
Ragweed at the Snorty was amazing!
Here is a video of Cody’s new song “Leaving Nashville” Live from the Snorty

1-20-07
Pictures and a recap of our trip to Steamboat
View pictures of our trip here.

Day 1 : We departed from Springfield at approximately 6:30 PM in our rental, a 2007 AWD Toyota Rav 4.  With the GPS synched, and days worth of music ready and waiting we were finally off on the trip we had been planning for months. I drove straight through Missouri and into Kansas for several hours, finally stopping in the middle of nowhere Kansas for our first of many restroom/gas/stretch breaks.  After refueling and chugging  down a few cans of AMP we were back on the road. About this time while traveling down I-70 with no other cars in sight I see a very bright green swooping light about 2-300 ft in the air. I assume it was a very low shooting star, but who knows? (Strange things happen in the middle of Kansas- we later found out there was a meteor shower that night) We stopped again in the lonely town of Hays and Krissy took over driving for awhile. 

Day 2:  Approx. 1AM : I take a much needed stare at the back of my eyelids while Krissy takes us into Colorado.  I wake up to snow and the temp about 20 degrees.  (At this point I started thinking about how much the last few hours resembled the scene from Dumb & Dumber, where Harry falls asleep and Lloyd drives them off course into the other direction. When Harry wakes up Lloyd comments that “man I thought the Rockies would be a little rockier than this!….. that John Denver was full of shit man….”)  Thankfully Krissy is much brighter than Lloyd and Harry were and got us to CO without any problems.  We stopped in Limon and filled up and took a much needed bathroom break.  I got back into the drivers seat and headed into Denver.  Just outside of Denver I decide to make a risky move and go with the updated “quicker” route that the GPS has just calculated for me.  After looking it over for a few minutes, I decide what the heck why not it looks like it will save us about 2 hours. So the new route takes us up through Winter Park and through some crazy hairpin curves through the mountains.  The fastest I think we ever went was about 40 mph.  We were both thankful we got out of the pass, hitting a more forgiving Hwy 40. (Later the next day we hear that there was a massive avalanche along this very route…. I was pretty excited that we had conquered “the beast”, but Krissy was already demanding that we take a different route back!) We roll into the Steamboat area about 7:30 AM mountain time.  
7:45: We try to check in to MusicFest, but learn that it will be at least 2 more hours until they are ready.  We park in the Holiday Inn parking lot, kick back the seats and catch some z’s.  We check in about 11AM and get our wristbands, directions, etc.  We venture across the street to our hotel and check in.  Luckily this wasn’t Krissy’s first time to MusicFest and she knew how to beat the system by checking into everything early.  We then ventured to Gondola Square and got our skis/boots/poles.  After venturing around Ski Times Square for awhile we headed downtown to scope out the shops, trying to hit everything before anyone else had even arrived.   After a few hours of walking around downtown Steamboat we ventured over to the famous 8^th street steakhouse for an anniversary dinner of prime rib.  Krissy vouched that she would not leave Steamboat until she had prime rib from here. I must agree with her when she says that it is the best!
After stuffing ourselves we headed back to the hotel and hit the outdoor hot-tub with a bottle of Asti.

Day 3: We wake up early and head to the slopes. Since this is my first time snow skiing I figured I better get some lessons so I went to Ski school for a few hours. The instructor asked for anyone who had ever water-skiedb, rollerbladed, or ice skated.  I had done all three so I went to the “Advanced Track”.  After about 30 mins of demonstration and lecturing, my instructor J.J. (a cool old man about 60 years old) takes us to the lift and down our first slope. He informed us that after about an hour and a half we were farther than most people got in an entire day. After about 5-6 runs on the preview hills I felt fairly comfortable and skipped out on the rest of the school day to meet Krissy for lunch at the Slopeside Grill.  After eating we went up and took my first full green. While I was at ski school Krissy went up to take a green, but mistakenly got on blue runs twice, so she was thankful to slow it down a bit.

 We went back to the hotel and got ready for the 1^st show of the evening.  We got to the “big tent” about an hour early so that we could get a good spot.  Tonight was Wade Bowen/Cross Canadian Ragweed/ Jack Ingram.  Wade came out and impressed us both singing mostly stuff from his new album “Lost Hotel.”  CCR came out and played about an hour and a half set, including most of the favorites, and Cody’s newest song “Oklahoma (which I love!).” Jack Ingram came out and played a set that included his number 1 hit “Love You.”  Neither Krissy nor I were impressed with Jack’s cocky stage presence, or his “alternative” band members, but overall the music was good.  We got out of the tent about midnight and took the 1^st of many interesting city bus rides back to the hotel.

Day 4: We decided to skip the slopes in order to prepare for a full day of concerts.  After lunch we ventured to the outdoor concert at the base of the mountain.  Brandon Rhyder and the Randy Rogers band were playing.  Both of them commented on how crazy all of us were for standing out in 1 degree weather with snow pouring down! I must say it was one of the best concerts I have been too.  There were about 1,000 people standing out in the snow singing every word to Randy’s songs, it was amazing! Later that evening we planned on heading up the mountain to see Mickey and Motorcars, but after standing outside in line for an hour in blizzard conditions, they cancelled the show due to high winds.  We then ventured over to the grand ballroom for plan B - The Red Dirt Rangers and Jason Boland & The Stragglers. I am glad that the first concert was cancelled because the Rangers put on one hell of a show with Jason.  After the show I managed to snatch a pick from Boland, and then got to meet Red Dirt Rangers fiddle player Randy “The Wildman” Crouch.  I got to chat with him for about 5 minutes and he told me about his house in Tahlequah, OK.  He lives out in the woods, no electricity, and has all natural wells.  He also had rigged up a recording studio using solar panels and car batteries!
Video of Red Dirt Rangers & Stoney LaRue - Playing Idabell Blues

Day 5:   This was the last day of concerts, so decided to take it pretty easy during the day shopping around for souvenirs and eating lunch.  The concerts began with the Cross Canadian Ragweed Jam session at 2:00.  This was a great set with appearances by many of the musicians who had performed earlier in the week.  This performance was an opportunity for the musicians to play whatever they wanted; there wasn’t a predefined set list, and they could go on and off stage as they pleased. The last show of Music Fest was one of the most anticipated, Mickey and the Motorcars and Reckless Kelly lead the way with others joining near the end for a final farewell.  We rode the bus back to the hotel for the last time and prepared for our departure back to Missouri the next day. 

1-19-07
Man it has been awhile since I updated!  I’ve been busy the past few months and rarely find any downtime to update this.  I will try in the next few months to get back on the ball.  A quick recap of the last few months. 

• Working fulltime as a project manager = busy
• Spent Thanksgiving at the Dallas Cowboys Game
• Joined my family and Krissy’s for Christmas
• Spent New Years in STL
• Took a week vacation to Music Fest in Steamboat CO
  • Listened to tons of Red Dirt Music
  • Hit the slopes for my first time
  • Got tons of great pictures
• Survived one of the worst ice storms to hit the mid-west in years