I am turning 30 in a few days!!! Not sure how I should feel about this and not sure how I really do feel. For the most part I think number is an age so I wont have a Rachel (Friends) freak out but I think it does kind of bother me cause it is weird. I decided to do a list of 30 things before I turned 35 and XGAMES is on my list. On the list with a big fat check mark cause I went and lived it and loved it. :)
Yes my husband and I went to Xgames with NO kids for 4 days 3 nights :) It was amazing and I already want to plan another trip away.
Let me warn you this post is going to be long for two reasons: one I am really excited and want to show off my pics which I have lovingly put into collages so it wont feel quite so long and two I want to share some of the things I learned about Xgames so if you want to go you can do it cheap/cheaper than some people.
Here are a few pics of us having fun and enjoying the games.
This is to show you some of the technical aspects of the games. Top left is tearing down the big air starting point. Top right is inside the RedBull vendor building. It was 2 stories high and you could walk in as often as you wanted to get a redbull or two!!
Here are a few pics from the main events we watched. While you are watching 1 event look around cause most likely they are doing warm up on the next event so you will get a sneak peak :)
The Street course! Super fun to watch.
Women's Skiing Superpipe Final
Totally worth the pain. I say it was painful because this Superpipe has more down hill slope than you would think. so if you are standing on the side (which is truly the best place to be) it is slippery and hard to stand at a 45 degree slope for hours but worth it!
Snowmobile racing (I forgot the name). We just watched the seeding not the final. This was hard to watch cause you could only see part of the course but you could see multiple parts so still really fun.
At the different sponsor booths they have signings for some of the different athletes during the days. Here are a few of the cuties I got to meet and get pictures with.
Okay now that you have seen most of the fun we experienced now I will give you tips and advice so you can enjoy your own Xgames!!
Hotel- Book it as soon as you find out the dates and location (I think Aspen is permanent but just this year they almost changed so I am not sure how long the contract is for it to stay in Aspen) I booked our trip in June 2012 and there were already about 4 hotels booked out. While booking you will notice Aspen and Snowmass they are 2 cities about 10 miles apart with the best busing system in between them I have ever seen. We stayed at the Stonebridge Inn, Snowmass and if we ever get to go again we will probably stay there again. I heard the front desk guy tell a lady to call them directly to book for the best price. Book early and plan for more cost than you want on the hotel, these 2 cities are ritzy!!
Bus/Cars/Transportation-We drove to the games but as soon as we arrived we parked our car and didn't drive it again until we were packed to leave. Parking costs in both cities fso even though we were staying in a hotel it didn't get us free parking. The buses run ALL the time okay not all the time but alot! Stonebridge had a bus stop right in front of the hotel. just walk out the door and look for a bus that has Aspen on the front and ride it to Buttermilk!
Schedules- If you go to the Xgames website a week or 2 before the games you can print the event schedule and the bus/transportation schedule.
Food- The one downfall to our hotel was NO breakfast okay it had a breakfast all you can eat even but the cost was $17 a person. I was worried about the cost of food at restaurants cause it is fancy land up there and we are cheap/poor :) So we decided to do a lot of the cooking in our ROOM! We decided to eat only 1 meal a day out so we could just enjoy eating out and not stress over the cost of things. We brought our crockpot and our electric kettle our room had a fridge but no microwave.
Our first day there we got in about noon so we first went to Xgames (Buttermilk) and checked things out and played until about 4. Then we came back to our room carried things in and started our 2 chicken breasts cooking on high in our crockpot with some water. Then we went back out to the games :) When we got back about 9 our food was cooked through so we shredded the chicken and added the BBQ sauce. We didn't add the sauce until the very end cause we didn't wan the smell to go throughout the hotel and get us in trouble. BBQ chicken on rolls and tada we had dinner. Looking back I would have brought/eaten our fruit with this meal to make it a little more balanced.
It didn't look like a lot of chicken but we normally only eat 1 breast each so that is what I brought and it proved to be the perfect amount.
Saturday morning we woke up to this awesome casserole cooking in our room! Before we left home I made a bag of this mixture so we could just dump it in and start cooking. This has 2 eggs each, some hashbrowns, 4 precooked sausage, onions, and green peppers. I forgot the cheese :( Next time I make this I will be sure to mix it in the bag so everything is evenly distributed. I got a few bites of straight green peppers (blehhh). This cooked on low for about 8 hours and was getting a little brown on the edges so careful of your cook time. start it at the last minute and turn it off as soon as you wake up. We then planned to eat lunch while at the games but we didn't....we were so full and they gave us yogurt so we didn't notice the time till 4 so we decided to eat an early dinner. But our plans for Sat night was a pork roast with cream of mushroom soup over it and then we had instant potatoes to go with it. Then Sun. morning we had cereal and yogurt/fruit.
I was super excited the cooking went so well and we will be using our crockpot in hotels more often.
Breakfast Casserole.
Free Swag!!!!
The sponsors love to give fun things away during the games! If you arrive to there on Thursday or Friday try to gather as much of the free stuff as possible. 2 reasons why: the lines of are WAY SHORTER than on sat. and if you wear the free things they give you and you are spotted wearing it then you will get something more!! for example see the sill GoPro racing bib on our friend in the lower right corner? well if you were spotted wearing that bib you would win either a shirt and a hat or a GoPro black edition camera!! Lucky for me I got my bib on friday night so when we arrive sat morning not many people were wearing the bibs and a girl spotted me :) I sadly only won the shirt and hat but still I won something. With the Locktite bandannas you see tied around our arms in tons of pics, well if we got spotted wearing those we got a free snowboard boot bag :( sadly we weren't spotted. Then our SWEET Repreve hats (lime green) those are made from 6 recycled bottles, super sweet. The hats are for sale on their website and are super warm and soft. If we were spotted wearing those fun hats we would have won a cool shirt that was grey and had a skier across the front, said Xgames, and Repreve. So the sooner you get the things to wear and get spotted the higher your chances of winning will be. This year Jeep was a sponsor and had a ton of fun free things the flip book in the bottom middle only took 7 sec to film and there are 63 pics in it. Jeep also had a contest to win a snowboard and skiies, and they had graffiti art they would draw on a poster or an I-phone case (we didn't want to wait in the line). Otter Box was there and they did a scavenger hunt and if you could match 4 different words-Dust, Drop, Water, Crush then all 4 people would win an Otter Box case. Luckily Scott and I had different words so we both won a case to put our phone, money or keys into to keep them dry and safe. Then you had Redbull! You could get as many free drinks as you wanted and they had lanyards, and stickers too. Office Max was there. I thought it was strange but okay they gave us a free jump drive for posting to our twitter, instagram, or facebook. So we did it and got the fun snowboard jump drive. ESPN had a tent with fun things in there too chips, bags, sunglasses, bracelets, or chapsticks. Xfinity gave chapstick and sunglasses to existing customers. Yoplait was there giving out as much yogurt as you could eat then they gave out 4 packs of it to take home. It is their new line of yogurt with way more protein. I think I touched on most of the things we got. I know in future years each booth will be giving different things but remember they will ALL be GIVING SOMETHING!! Don't just walk by and glance at the booths like we did the first day walk up to them and see what they have :)
Here are a few pics we got taken at photo booths in the sponsors tent.
yes that is a gold medal!
I am so happy we went and I am super happy to have a check mark on my list of goals!
You can find this awesome post linked up to the following Fantastic Parties:
