Aspen
nearing the top of the pass
Heading into the ski towns of Colorado, we left the regular world and entered some sort of very expensive fantasy landscape. Expensive, but stunningly beautiful, mind you. Our van did a stand up job of hauling us over the 12,800 ft. Independence Pass, an altitude equal to the summit of the Middle Teton that I climbed years ago and higher than the top of Mt. Hood. We were forced to learn about downshifting for the remainder of this journey.
what a giant poster!
The Belly Up in Aspen was a cute little venue with very a fantastic sound crew and really nice employees. It supplied an oxygen machine for the talent. Given its size, maybe 250 capacity tops, we were all astounded to see the amazing level of talent that the club brings in. Rufus Wainright had been there the night before us, and Talib Kwali was to follow. Sara was quite honored to set up our merch next to a giant framed picture of Snoop Dogg. Despite being a Monday night, the club filled up and we had a great show. We played every song we had, also introducing the long gestating new tune Always and a drum solo/ chorus reprise ending for We Are The Tide that really got the crowd going.
Blind Pilot and Snoop Dogg, together at last
After the show we headed to our pricelined hotel in Snowmass Village, only to find it shut down with a note to go to a different hotel. Following the trail, we sent Ryan and Israel to check in (priceline reservations are only for 2 people) and they came back reporting that the second hotel’s computers were down and they hadn’t gotten the priceline info, so they had no way to trust that we had paid already. A confirmation number was not enough to convince the cranky front desk man, although he ultimately gave in when Ryan brought his laptop in and showed him the emailed receipt. Unfortunately there was not way to sneak seven people into this hotel, so we had to buy a second room. However, this was the first hotel-sneaking-in failure in several tours- pretty good!
