• Published 25th Feb 2016
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Silver Glow's Journal - Admiral Biscuit



Silver Glow takes an opportunity to spend a year at an Earth college, where she'll learn about Earth culture and make new friends.

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November 28 [Breckenridge]

November 28

It was a good thing that we had gone to bed early, 'cause Peggy and Victoria had both set their alarms early so that they could get up and go to Breckenridge first thing in the morning.

Me and Lindsay were already up—I'd gotten up first and she'd woken up right after, and she'd made some coffee for both of us to share.

We were drinking it on the balcony and talking, and I'd been looking down the valley and thinking about getting in a short morning flight when I turned my ears 'cause I heard Peggy's telephone sound an alarm, and I guess my hearing is better than Lindsay's, 'cause she asked what I heard.

So I told her and we turned around and watched Peggy fumble around until she found her portable telephone and she looked at it and then turned it off and set it down on her chest and I thought she was going to go back to sleep, but then she picked it back up again and looked at it and then pushed the covers off.

She went into the bathroom and when she came back out she'd splashed some cold water on her face to help wake her up, and gotten some of it on her shirt, too. And she got a cup of coffee and then came out to join us on the balcony even though she was only wearing a t-shirt and her sleeping pants.

Peggy said that the cold air would help wake her up. I thought she was kind of crazy, 'cause her arms got all goosebumpy and then she started shivering. But she stayed out there anyway and drank some of her coffee, even though her hand was shaking a little bit.

Lindsay said that Peggy was making her feel cold, and I thought so, too, and we both agreed that it was a kind of dumb way to wake up. But Peggy said that it had two benefits, and the second one was to wake up Victoria, and so she went back in the hotel room and touched her hand to Victoria's cheek.

Her timing was perfect, 'cause just about when Victoria started yelling at her, her alarm went off. And I could still hear her grumbling after she turned the alarm off, even through the door.

Me and Lindsay just looked at each other and I gave her my empty coffee cup and said that I was going to fly a little bit to stretch my wings but not very far, 'cause I knew that they wanted leave as soon as they could. But they still had to get dressed, so I had that much time.

I jumped off the balcony and this time instead of going downhill, I went up, and followed the river a little ways closer to its source.

It wasn't snowing anymore, but it was still overcast, and so it was a little bit hard to see. If the ground hadn't been all covered in snow, it might have been really difficult to make it out, but I could see where trees were and where the road was, plus there were lots of lights at the hotel, so it was really easy to just look back and see where it was.

The river went under the road, and then up into the mountains, and I followed it just a little ways but not all that far, because it kept disappearing under pine trees and I didn't want to get so far away by mistake that I couldn't find the hotel again. And I thought that maybe if they were really really eager to leave that they could get dressed pretty quick, and then they'd be waiting on me.

I glided most of the way back, and then I landed back on our balcony. I looked through the window to make sure that it was the right room before I went in, and I saw Peggy and Victoria were still in there, so I went in.

I put my GoPro in my saddlebags, and that was all that I had to pack, 'cause everything else was already in Lindsay's Range Rover. And then I waited until they were both ready—Lindsay had gone downstairs to brush off her truck and Cobalt, and Peggy had given her the keys to Cobalt, so that she could start it and get it warm, 'cause it didn't have butt-warmers.

They got their bags and Peggy balanced her duffel bag on my back so that I could carry it, and Victoria said that I looked like the world's cutest pack mule. And she had to stop at the front desk to check us out of the room, so Peggy took Victoria's bag and carried it to Lindsay's truck while I went over to Cobalt with Peggy's bag.

Everyone was more eager to get going than to eat breakfast, and I assumed that we'd get something on the way, but it turned out that wasn't true. There weren't any restaurants in Monarch, and the next little town we went through didn't have any, either.

We turned off onto the 285 Road, which twisted and wound through the mountains. We had to go slow, because the road still had some snow on it, although you could tell that they'd pushed a lot of it away already.

There were houses here and there on either side of the road, but not too many. And I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever pass a restaurant, especially when we got to a little town called Nathrop and went right through it because it didn't have any restaurants.

But not too far after that was Buena Vista, and we stopped there at the Evergreen Cafe, and I was looking at the menu and thinking about what I ought to order and Lindsay told me that I should get the French Toast because it was really good. I trusted her, so I got that, and it was really tasty. The bread was nice and thick and it had some cinnamon sugar on it but not too much, and it filled me right up.

It was light out when we finished eating, and we had to backtrack a little bit, 'cause we'd had to get off our road to get breakfast, but it had been a good place to do it, because there weren't too many buildings or houses on the next stretch of the road.

The scenery was really beautiful, though. We went over a pass and then down into a wide flat area that just stretched on between the mountain peaks, and every now and then we'd pass a road that seemed to go off into nowhere, or a couple of lonely houses by the road.

We didn't see another proper town until we got to Fairplay and it also had a really big rock mine. Peggy said that the TV movie South Park was kind of based off of the town. It also had the South Platte River running through it, which we'd been driving by in Nebraska, and it was really neat to see it near its source, and we followed it on the 9 Road, and then we were back in the mountains again.

It didn't take us too much longer to get to Breckenridge, which was a pretty big town, and the ski resort was huge. Even this early there were a lot of people there, and Peggy said that it was kind of terrible on the weekends, and if you didn't get there super-early you had to park miles away from the park.

I thought that there might be so many people on the trails that we wouldn't have any room, but she said that one reason that it was so popular was because there were lots and lots of trails and lifts, and so we could find a place where there weren't that many people.

Lindsay and Victoria both wanted to see what kinds of tricks I could do, and I think that they also wanted to show off the tricks that they knew, so after we got dressed and got our tickets, we went out to the terrain park first. It was so big that it actually had four different ones, although one was just for kids.

Peggy said that we ought to go to Park Lane, because it was a little bit simpler than Highway 9, and it would give me a chance to warm up.

We rode a gondola in the sky to get to the park, and that was really neat. It went over a neighborhood and then through a building so it could turn, and then it went over a big open area before it got to another building and turned again.

I was glad that they knew where things were, because all the signs confused me. It was so big! There were lots of peaks with trails running down from them and chair lifts going every which way, but the girls all knew Breckenridge, so they led me to the lift that would take us to the terrain park. And I decided that I'd sit with them, 'cause I was a little bit worried about getting lost and I thought that if I did I might never find them again.

There were a bunch of jumps, and also rails that you could slide down, and before we started going down the hill, the girls showed me exactly where we were supposed to go, and said that if there was someone else using a hill to wait, because otherwise you could land on someone who hadn't made the jump like they'd intended.

I thought that that was good advice.

So when everyone in front of us had gone, they started for the first big hill, and all three of them jumped over it one at a time, and then it was my turn, so I aimed for it and rocked my snowboard a little bit to get it going, and the liftoff went fine but I was out of practice on landings, so I just flew back to the ground and landed that way.

As we kept working our way down the hill, I got better confidence in the jumps, and carried them longer before I used my wings to land, and by the time we'd gotten to the bottom of the hill, I was landing without using my wings at all, which I would have been more proud of, except that both Lindsay and Victoria had been doing loops in the air on their jumps.

I could do loops, too, so after we rode up to the top again, I said that I was gonna go first, and I got up some good speed and when I came off the top, I used my wings to angle me almost straight up, and I did a backflip, and then landed at the base of the ramp and got out of the way.

So the rest of the way down the hill it sort of turned into a competition about who could get the most air and only Peggy didn't compete 'cause she knew that I was going to win, and she said that she wasn't going to risk killing herself to try and win a jumping contest with a pegasus, which was pretty smart of her.

I thought that flapping my wings would be cheating, but there were no rules about just holding them open, and when we got to the last jump, instead of going up like we'd been doing, I went long, and just glided down back by the chair lift. Victoria thought that it was cheating, but Lindsay said it wasn't and maybe she should hold out her arms and see if she could fly further that way. I didn't think she would unless she had feathers, too. Her snowcoat wasn't baggy enough to give her any lift at all.

After that, we just started to have fun. I experimented to find out how many different tricks I could do after jumping off the ramp, like wing rolls and I even managed a tight forward roll although that one was kind of scary. Normally, if it looked like I was going to run out of room before I landed back on the snow, I could just fly out of it, but when I tried the forward roll I knew that I wasn't going to have time if I messed up. It worked out, even though it felt really weird.

I also tried the rails, which were kind of hard because you had to be going sideways to ride on them, and it was really hard to keep my balance and I fell off that a couple of times before I got it figured out and could go the whole way down it.

Victoria and Lindsay kept looking around for boys to troll, and they finally found some teenagers who I guess hadn't seen us going down the hill before. And they were bragging about how good they were and after they got over the first jump both Victoria and Lindsay looked at each other and nodded, and took their turn over the hill.

At first I thought that maybe they'd had a bad run, 'cause they were really wobbly and made bad landings, but Peggy said that that was on purpose, and after a couple more sloppy jumps and worse landings, the boys were making fun of them, and so when it was their turn to go next, they went one right after another, made the jump easily and both flipped in the air, and then they landed next to the rail, rode it down to the next jump, and then hopped all the way down the hill like that without stopping, 'cause it was clear and nobody was waiting for their turn.

Me and Peggy went down next and she told me to follow her and not stop unless she did, so I did and I did loops and wing rolls and skipped over one of the hills 'cause I was still in the air when it went under me, and that was lots of fun. And I don't think those boys knew what had just happened, 'cause when I landed at the bottom, they were still standing there and looking down the hill at us.

I was getting kind of hungry, and so we went up a different chair lift, which took us to a restaurant called the Vista House that was right at the peak of the mountain.

They had a really good chili which was kind of messy to eat, but filled me right up. And when we were done eating I wanted to go right back outside, but Lindsay said that if we went snowboarding right after eating snow-sharks might get us, and I said that I could outfly a snow-shark if I had to, and I didn't think that those were real anyways.

Victoria said that they might be, and she threw a little salt at Lindsay so that if there were any, they'd go after her.

We went down the other side of the peak, 'cause there were trails there, and when we got to the bottom there was a lift to take us up to the other side, and I let them ride it and I flew instead. And we played around there for a little bit, which was really relaxing after all the tricks we'd done in the terrain park earlier.

Then they wanted to go over to the Freeway, which was the challenging terrain park. All the jumps were much bigger, and there were rails that you could slide on right after coming off of a jump, and they also had a big, open half-pipe. It was like the one at the wheeled snowboard park in Colorado Springs, but it was a lot bigger, and people were really going flying when they got to the top of it.

I think if I hadn't had wings, I'd have been scared when I was at the top of the hill looking down, but I knew that as long as I didn't do anything too dumb I could fly out of it.

I still let Lindsay go first.

When she had cleared all the big jumps and hadn't gotten eaten by a snow-shark, I took my turn, and I overshot on the first jump and actually had to dive a little bit to get the second one. But then I had it figured out, and I landed midway up the third ramp and made the rest perfectly, and when I cleared the last one, I glided down next to Lindsay and watched Peggy take her turn.

The second time down, all of us tried some tricks, and Peggy was the first one of the girls to jump and then land on the rail and slide down that.

We did that a bunch of times and then went to the half-pipe, and Lindsay was really good at it. She could hold in the air longer than I thought a human should be able to, and every time when she came back down she landed perfectly and then went up the other side.

I had trouble getting turned around the first time I went and had to land on the edge to try again, 'cause it felt unnatural to twist my body like I was, but I was determined to figure out how to do it without using my wings to help guide me, and it took lots of tries but I finally did. And then once I'd gotten consistent at it, Peggy made a movie of me jumping out of the half-pipe.

Peggy wanted to make sure that I got to ride the alpine slide, because she said that it was lots of fun, so we went to try it out. Lindsay and Victoria said that they'd stay at the terrain park, and we could meet them back there when we were done.

So we went over to where it was, and it was a strange little railcar that you could ride on and it would take you in a big loop. And at first they didn't want to let me on 'cause it wasn't built for ponies, but after I told them that I'd gotten a pilot's license and driven GoKarts and even flown a Dreamliner they decided that it was okay. Maybe I should have told them that I hadn't actually flown the real airplane.

It was really weird being strapped into the seat, 'cause my hind hooves didn't reach the little feet-rests that they had, and it was awkward to hold on to the levers that controlled the brakes, but I could do it. I just had to be careful that my hoof-boots didn't stick me to them.

It took its time climbing a bit of a hill, and then it went down the other side and started to pick up speed. Sometimes it was on bridges and other times it was running through a cut in the snow, and I was glad I was strapped in, because it made really sharp turns and I think I would have slid out if it hadn't been for the seat belt.

I had to use the brakes when I got to the end, and then I had to be helped out of it, 'cause I couldn't get the straps off on my own. And it was so much fun, that we did it again, before going back to the terrain park.

We played there for almost the rest of the day, until the sun was behind the mountains and the park was closing. We got the last ride up the chairlift, and we started off on Psychopath and then cut onto a bunch of different trails that eventually took us back to the gondolas.

There were lots of hotels around, and so we went to the Doubletree and got a room there. It wasn't as nice as the room we'd gotten in Monarch and it didn't have a balcony, and the hotel didn't have a hot tub, either. Which would have been nice, 'cause I was sore all over from our day.

Everyone except me wanted to change clothes. I'd already gotten undressed, so I didn't have to. I didn't want to wait in the restaurant for them, though, so I went up to the room, too, and preened my wings some while they were putting on new clothes. I had a couple of coverts come out and so I put them on the desk 'cause I hadn't brought in my saddlebags. And Lindsay picked one of them up and started looking at it so I told her that she could have it if she wanted, but it wasn't a very good feather. A bunch of the vanes were damaged, especially at the tip. She said that she thought that gave it character.

The hotel had a restaurant called the 9600 and it had a nice view of the mountain. They had a proper fish, too, so I ordered that. And the waiter seemed kind of surprised and he said that I was the first pony he'd met who had wanted to eat fish, which was how I found out that Canterlot unicorns liked to visit in the summer.

I wasn't sure how much fun the mountain would be in the summer, but he said that it was and there were all sorts of trails and other things to do in town, plus it was really beautiful.

I thought that if they were smarter they'd come in the winter when they could go snowboarding.

After we were done eating, Lindsay went out to get some alcohol, 'cause she said that it was way overpriced at the hotel. And that meant that there wasn't as much competition for the shower, and so Peggy got to go first and then I told Victoria to take the second one. And I was in the shower when Lindsay came back, and so when I came out I found out that she'd gotten a big bottle of peppermint schnapps and was making mint hot chocolate with it. She also had another kind of liquor called Fireball for making cinnamon hot hot chocolate, and she told us not to drink it all while she was in the shower.

We probably couldn't have even if we'd wanted to, 'cause the coffeemaker that we were using to heat the water up only made it one cup at a time, so we had to take turns with it. And Victoria thought it would be funny to give her one while she was in the shower, so she made a cup of it and then used a pen to unlock the bathroom door and went in and offered it to her.

Peggy said that that was a lot nicer than the time they'd all been snowboarding together and the two of them had ganged up and gotten snowballs and thrown them at her when she was in the shower. And then Victoria said that there was an icemaker down the hall, and we had a bucket by our drinking glasses. She didn't get a chance to try, though, 'cause Lindsay came out of the shower wrapped in a towel with her drink in her hand.

We sat on our beds and talked until it was late, 'cause we didn't have to get up early tomorrow. And we probably all drank more than we should have, and I was getting pretty yawny and having trouble on my hooves by the time we finally decided to go to bed. I think that being at a high altitude makes the alcohol work faster.

Peggy had to help me up in bed, and after she had I remembered that I had to pee, so I had to get back out of bed again, and then when I was done she had to help me up a second time, and she put the covers over me and told me that maybe I shouldn't have had as much to drink as I had, and she was probably right.

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