When it feels like things are changing by the hour, a week feels like a year, and three weeks a lifetime.
That’s how I feel this morning as I write to you from Newport, having scrambled home Monday, cutting short our ski vacation in Telluride, CO.
Last Friday, at this time, we were waking up to a few inches of wet snow and windy conditions. We skied in what felt like a snow globe being shaken madly by a five-year-old. Visibility was nil.
It snowed most of the night, and on Saturday (the mountain having been resurfaced with seven inches of light powder) we cut fresh tracks all morning under bright blue skies.
What a difference a day makes.
What’s cool about Telluride is there’s a Mountain Village, where we stayed, that sits above the town of Telluride, connected by a free gondola system whisking you between the two areas much like the monorail does at Disney.
We were in the gondola on Saturday night, heading to town for dinner and talking about how Disney had closed its parks. We wondered what the fate of our ski vacation would be.
Only minutes before we had read Vail was closing and had received a notice on our phones that Telluride was staying open as planned to April 5. As such, we were relieved, feeling fortunate that tomorrow there would be more skiing, but uneasy.
Then Owen said, looking down at his phone, “Telluride’s closing for the season.”
“Not true,” we said, telling him about the letter from the resort.
Texting with his high school friend who lives in Telluride, Owen texted back to his friend, “We have a letter saying it’s staying open.”
Friend texted back:
“Closing”
“Facts”
“Went hunting with locals today. Shutting down.”
Great.
Sure enough, hours later, we received another letter. “Telluride closed for the season.”
Here we were, stuck in a boxed canyon, without a flight home until Wednesday.
We hung around Sunday.
Then Monday morning, as the market dropped 13%, that feeling of desperation set in.
Long story short, “Your Survival Guy” had to scramble. Fortunately, we work with Tara Hyland at Virtuoso and were able to secure what felt like the last flight out of Dodge that night.
It all happened so fast.
Life changed literally in a matter of minutes.
One last thing worth mentioning to you. Traveling with mid-four digits worth of hundred dollar bills certainly spoke louder than words as we lined up a quick exit from our condo and shipped equipment home, all with the special help of our new friends on the local staff. Talk about Fly by Night.
Read my entire series, Coronavirus Infects Stock Market here.
