Ski Club Vail’s Lindsey Kildow, a four-event racer on the U.S. Ski Team, reports regularly from the World Cup tour in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
Lake Louise, Alberta – I almost had another travel horror story getting here from Aspen Sunday night, but it turned into a really funny story instead.
After Sunday’s slalom in Aspen, our flight to Denver got canceled. Julia Mancuso and I were waiting in line at the ticket counter when I overheard this guy talking about chartering a plane to Denver.
I was like, “Julia, we should ask them if we can go with them.” She was like, “No, we’ll be fine.” I’m like, “No. I’m not going to stay here another night, I really need to get to Lake Louise. I’ll just go tell them you’re an Olympic gold medalist and I’m a World Cup champion and we’ll get on.”
She kept saying no, so finally I pushed her over there. She was like, “Excuse me, do you think we can get on your plane with you? We need to go to our next World Cup race. She’s a World Cup champion and I’m an Olympic champion.”
They said, “Sure, just give us some autograph cards or something.”
Someone picked us up from the public terminal in Aspen and took us to the special charter plane terminal, which was so nice. It was like a home inside with a fireplace, couches, free Internet and hot chocolate. They ordered take-out from a restaurant in town and we ate while we were waiting for the plane to get there.
We get on this eight-seat private charter plane and it was unbelievable. It was the guy who organized it, his family and us. We flew to Denver and we made our flight from Denver to Calgary. It was crazy.
We get to the charter terminal in Denver and we pull up next to the Nuggets’ charter, this huge, unbelievable plane. There was a shuttle waiting to pick us up and drive us to the public terminal. Our bags already were tagged, so we just dumped our bags on the belt, went to the gate and we got there like five minutes before boarding.
From Calgary to Lake Louise, there’s still a two-hour drive. The roads were pretty icy and it was snowing. I finally got here like 3 a.m. and slept until 1 p.m. Monday.
The only problem now: It was 15 degrees below zero here and it’s supposed to get colder. It’s supposed to be 22 below on Wednesday. I’m going to buy a new ski mask, and I’m probably going to be tripling my layers underneath my downhill suit.
