After too many hours travelling, the little jaunt stateside has ended. Much fun was had. Snowboarding in the Rockies was as good as it sounded; going somewhere where there was an abundance of snow was clearly a good plan; taking a snowmobile to the top of a big ol’ pass to see the Continental Divide and the inspiration behind South Park was clearly an inspired choice of activity; hitting the back bowls at Vail was also muchly worthy as activities go (despite not catching young Ms Diaz on the rebound, dammit).

Of course, there were downsides. I only got to sample one of the brews on offer in The Brewery, due to a somewhat dubious Colorado state law preventing off sales of alcohol on Sundays. And the flight home was a tad uncomfortable; add that to a little matter of elderly airframes and you get a situation in which you do not want to experience bad turbulence on attempting to land. And you certainly don’t want to have a go around to top it off… Oh, and further damnation be heaped upon Gatwick for making us wait nearly 90 minutes to get our bloody luggage… And speaking of airports, sure, the terminal may be in Denver, but I swear that the runways are in Utah. The taxiing was immense.

But those were but minor things. All in, ’twas great craic. More of that, please.