Two weeks ago, I went skiing (in Aspen!) with my wife and another couple. I’m not going to write up the whole thing now, because I’ll never get this post finished if I try. Instead, I’ll share a few thoughts I jotted down on the plane ride home.

• Why do your kids always get sick right before you leave them with their grandparents?

• I should have learned this lesson from previous ski trips: skiing and romance don’t mix as well as you’d think. Unless maybe there’s a jacuzzi on the premises. Which there wasn’t. (We also got stuck with the kids’ room in the condo, which didn’t help either.)

• il Poggio at Snowmass is one of the best restaurants I have ever been to, anywhere. The atmosphere was amazing, the food spectacular, and the staff genuinely friendly. The mood infected everyone in the place; there was a lot of conversation between tables. The couple next to us had eaten there every night of their trip. The family on our other side were regulars, and gave us a free box of Girl Scout cookies just because.

• My arms are too sore from snowboarding to write much. Yes, it was my first attempt. Snowboarding was a lot easier on the first day — while the instructor was holding me back, and I was trying to do more, faster — than on the second, as I stared alone down a long, icy, decidedly non-bunny slope.

• Holcombe (the other guy on the trip) noted that the town of Aspen had no flavor. I wondered if it was because places like Aspen (and Hollywood) are where America’s consumer culture begins.

• Holcombe may also be the most natural schmoozer I’ve ever met. He’d strike up a conversation with the shrubbery if there was no one standing next to him. Who does he look up to the most? “My brother. He never pays for anything. People he knows just give him stuff.”

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