Friday: Touchdown In Boulder

Talk about the ultimate feat. Back in September, Rogelio, Corrine and meese were approached by Derek, the hubby of our mutual friend Whitney Moxie Moose, who was to turn 40 on Dec. 13. He invited us all out for a surprise 40th birthday celebration for Mox, complete with Friday dinner in their hometown Boulder, and a weekend at ski destination Winter Park in the mountains of Colorado.

Within a week, we had all booked reservations, along with Ro's man Bill. It was a done deal—except for the three months of trying our damndest not to leak it to Whitney, which was not a simple task, given that Ro, Corrine, Mox and I all e-mail each other on a regular basis, spilling the goings on in our lives. But somehow we kept a lid on the surprise.

I haven't been to Colorado in a good long time. First, the Taylor family embarked on a cross-country vacation when I was 15... where we visited the Grand Canyon, which scared the bejesus out of me. Heights—not my favorite. In the early 1990s, ex Pook and I visited Phoenix and took a side trip to the same destination. I've never been to Boulder or Denver, so this was all fresh and new.

Last Friday, I was up and out at 5:30 a.m., for the flight, and we all met up in Denver around 12:30 p.m. Miraculously, all of our flights aligned without delays: meese from New York's Laguardia, Corrine from Dulles, and Ro and Bill from D.C. National. Derek, meanwhile, took a bus in from Boulder-town and met up with us at baggage claim...We rented a big Jeep, and drove two hours into Boulder, where we were then sequestered at the Days Inn, giggling and chortling over how terribly clever we were to have actually pulled this off, as we counted down the hours for Moxie's big birthday weekend surprise... Imagine: the damn Days Inn, and this is the view outside the window. Astonishing, eh?