Tahoe trip!

We're back from Tahoe and to say I had a great time wouldn't do it justice! I had an absolute BLAST! Now, I am not a very sporty person AT ALL. My hand-eye coordination (or hand-brain coordination sometimes) is total crap. I only learned to use an elliptical machine a few years ago. And my skiing experience is limited to one 7 day trip to Breckenridge with the family when I was 13 or 14. Now, I remember taking almost a full week of ski school, and then spending two more days running double-black-diamond runs with my Dad and brother. But that was over 15 years ago! And while I did ski in college a few times - I remember being way unsteady on my skis. While that could have been due to the fact that the hills in Indiana are covered in ice rather than snow, it could also mean that my memories are viewed through rose-colored glasses and I wasn't the complete snow-sport bada$$ I thought myself to be.

Well, I decided the first day to just go out on some greens and blues and see where I was at. And I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to parallel ski and take some turns down the mountain. The skiing did wear me out and I was ready to call it a day around 2:30. Once I was tired, it was harder to keep control and I took one big spill where I went butt over teakettle, rolling down the mountain and smacking my head and neck on it (chiro, appointment for Monday please!).

At the top of the mountain, Day 1

Shortly before this picture was taken I was checking Chad for weakness. But thought I'd be slightly more appropriate for the pic.

The second day we took an intermediate class where the instructor corrected a few small things (boots were too loose, we were committing to turns to late which caused a quicker, more out of control turn) and after that I felt on top of my game! I felt like I could have spent a whole week out on the mountain. I'm sure after a few more trips and practice I could be back on the black diamonds - I am way more cautious now than I was as a teen, and my legs are in no shape for the superquick swishing to be sure. But now I feel like I can get back to that skill level at some point, and that feels good that being good at something isn't impossible.

The thing that sucks is that I don't really like any other sports, and I can't ski very much where I live now. BOO.

So the second day we did the class in the morning, and in the afternoon we skied with the group of our friends. Chad and Stacy and I decided to head to the far side of the mountain and work our way back. At the top of the last lift, he said "Ok, on this trail to the left is blue. The right is black diamond (expert). They meet in the middle, so you girls go to the left and I'll go to the right and we'll meet up."

As he skied away, I thought: "Famous last words. We are screwed."

This is not a picture of the hillside we were going down

So anyways, we look at the hill and it's a sheer precipice - we can't see where we're going until we shove off the top of the mountain. And baby, that's not how I roll. I like to know where I'm going first. So we skiied down the side parallel to the dropoff a bit - to see where we were going. That's when we realized the area we were supposed to go down was completely ungroomed. There was a trail, but it was RIGHT under the lift only, and the place we'd skied down to had no trail, nothing. But at that point we kind of had to go down it. Great.

About halfway down that area (and stopping and discussing our options every few minutes, with the option of taking skis off and hiking back to the top sounding better and better), we finally realized that about halfway down the ungroomed hill we were on there was ANOTHER sheer dropoff. Oh yay (insert Chad-cursing here). We skied parallel to that one for a while before finally popping back out onto the trail. Whew. Only it had taken us so long that Chad thought we hadn't waited for him and had bailed on us. Boo. So we raced back to the lift and snagged it up the mountain to head back to our lodge, completely on the other side of the mountain.

Once we did the next run and got to the next lift, we had fifteen minutes to get to the top of the mountain, ski down it, and hit the next lift before they closed. So we hauled butt to the final lift and got there at 3:58, 2 minutes before closing time. We took the final run down to our lodge and walked in to cheers from the crowd that we actually made it back. It was kind of fun, like we were our own little band of heroes, just me and my friend Stacy. At least people didn't have to come retrieve us from the other side of the mountain!

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Here are another few pics of the group on the last day. Mike and I stayed in and rested up - I could have skied some more, but I didn't want to get back to Chicago all tired and sore. So we stayed in and watched movies and took naps. But it looks like the group had fun!

After they got back from skiing, the group above jumped in the hot tub. Brett said he would get Chris a drink that night if (in his swimtrunks) he jumped off the deck railing into a snowbank with a bellyflop and did a snow angel. I happened to be watching from a window up above and saw the whole thing, it was awesome. That is so our friends, making silly bets.

All in all, it was a great trip. The place we stayed at was amazing, and our friends are already talking about going back next year!

all pics stolen from my friend Deanne!