Nothing like a good road trip to clear stock-market and newspaper rubble from the mind. I spent the weekend in Telluride with a college buddy, Peter Ricciardelli, who has lived there for nearly 30 years.  I couldn’t keep up with him on the slopes, since he’s in even better shape now than when we were at the University of Virginia in the late 1960s.  Hiking, biking and plenty of skiing have kept him as fit as a collegiate wrestler. That and plenty of cross-country skiing. He and his significant other, Lisa, a native Coloradan who lives in Montrose, made fresh tracks on Nordic skis Sunday while I took another crack at Telluride Mountain. I had the use of a lift pass that belonged to a friend of Peter’s — a gold medallion that can be used by the bearer to access nearly every ski trail in North America.  Sort of like the “Letters of Transit” that got Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo out of Casablanca, no questions asked.

It snowed intermittently the whole time I was there, leaving about two to three feet of fresh powder. The snow fell much harder in the San Juan Mountains south of Telluride, and there were reports that Durango was practically buried in flakes. In Telluride, the locals were ecstatic, since there hadn’t been any snow since just before New Year’s. By all accounts, business during the Christmas holidays was strong, notwithstanding a two-day power outage that left quite a few restaurants temporarily dark. Telluride is not easy to get to, especially in bad weather, and that’s why it appeals so strongly to corporate execs who can fly there in Gulfstreams. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first big-time celebrity to arrive on the scene, and Tom Cruise followed.  Regular folks in Telluride don’t gawk at movie stars, and so it has become the “in” place for celebrities who crave the rare luxury of blending in, sort of.

Many $15 Million-Plus Homes

Telluride real estate is not quite as pricey as Aspen’s, but there are still dozens of listings for $15 million and up if you have a large family, a valet, a chef and a maid in tow.  For young couples and working stiffs, there are plenty of cozy condos for sale in the $3 million to $5 million range.

Almost as pleasurable for me as the skiing was the seven-hour drive coming and going. The towering San Juan Mountains look like a set of really bad teeth, with jagged edges that thrust above 14,000 feet.  Amidst blue skies and bright morning sunlight, the peaks were ablaze when I pulled out of town early Monday morning. I had looked forward to a breakfast stop in Ridgway, at the True Grit café that was named after the John Wayne movie shot there. Alas, it was closed, and so I pushed on to Montrose for more mundane fare. One of the real pleasures of long drives, especially alone, is that you get to hear music on your car stereo in a way that you do not when you merely play it in the background at home. I rediscovered Joanne Brackeen’s “Breath of Brazil” album. A prodigious jazz pianist, although not exactly a household name, Brackeen’s monster chops can be sampled at Amazon by clicking here.  Her playing was so inspiring that I’ve decided to add a regular link to selected musical tracks on the Rick’s Picks site soon.  No one seated at a desk should ever be more than a mouse click away from music, without which the world would make even less sense than it does.

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