Monday, January 02, 2006

A White New Year’s

Went up to Jeff’s cabin for New Year’s, along with Shana, Kitt, and Ryan. We were worried that there wouldn’t be any snow, because it was too warm – we drove up Friday night through four hours of rain, and it was raining all the way at the summit, which did not bode well for snow conditions.

We woke up late on Saturday and decided to go get some breakfast, since we wouldn’t be snowboarding. Apparently we had the same bright idea as about half the population of Tahoe, because every breakfast place we tried was completely packed. We spent about an hour trying to find a breakfast place, by which point it was noon, so we had pizza instead.

After lunch we went back to the cabin. Or at least, Jeff, Somala and I went back to the cabin; I unwisely left Kitt, Ryan, and Shana to navigate themselves back, and we didn’t see them for another three hours. In the meantime we broke out the Monopoly set and had ourselves a “quick” game. Jeff eventually managed to bankrupt Somala when she was unlucky enough to land on Boardwalk, and with Jeff having three-quarters of the property after that, the outcome was predictable.

Saturday night we went to the casinos for New Year’s Eve, did a little gambling, and got on main street for the unorganized countdown. The roads were very icy as a result of the recent rainfall and drop in temperature, and I fell victim to a patch of black ice. Apparently Jeff warned me about it prior, but with a street full of shouting people, I didn’t hear him. Fortunately nothing wounded except my pride. We zipped back to the house immediately after midnight and went to bed.

Jeff had to leave the cabin early on Sunday, so we all got up at around 7am, packed our stuff, and headed to Sierra-at-Tahoe. The rain from Friday night and Saturday morning started turning into snow around noon on Saturday, so by Sunday we had a decent covering of snow.

Both Ryan and Shana were learning to ‘board, so Kitt and I spent the morning giving lessons. In the afternoon we left them together on the bunny slope and put in a few quick runs. The wind started picking up around noon, and it was very windy by 3pm when we left the resort. On our last run, Kitt and I were headed down the slope, and the wind started blowing so hard it knocked Kitt over and brought me to a complete halt. Nonetheless, we got some good riding in, and we’re currently crammed into the car, fighting our way back down highway 50 to get back to the bay area.

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