| Title: | Goin’ to California
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| When: | Fly into Reno on Thursday, February 22nd, in the afternoon/evening. We have the house until Tuesday February 27th. |
| Who: | Confirmed: Chip, Jamie, Steve, Mark, Mona, and Rachel Unconfirmed: Hugh, Gregg |
| Where: | South Lake Tahoe, close to Heavenly Valley and the casinos of South Shore, which means that we have to get our tired butts off the couch and go play at least once or twice this year. |
| PreFlight: | I found out from John that the house has four bedrooms and “approximately six beds”. I’m not sure what “approximately” means, but we should be able to bring at least a couple other people with us on this trip. It also has a one car garage and a driveway for another car, so if we end up with two cars, we should be fine. As usual, I will try to get one “free” from Hertz, and we can pick up another if needed.Here’s a link to a “Google Earth Placemark” that will fly you magically to the spots we’re planning on going for Skiapalooza #8. I’ve marked the closest grocery store (food, liquor, advil, medical supplies), the closest hospital (where we’ll find Hugh), the steepest cliff at Squaw (where we’ll find Jamie), and the casinos (for Mark). I’m gonna catch sh** for this next comment, but I don’t know where the quilt stores are for the women, so they’re gonna have to “hang out with the guys”… LMAOIf you have Google Earth installed, you can double-click on the attached Placemark file and it will fly you to a location. If not, you will need to install Google Earth first (available at http://earth.google.com). |
| PostFlight: | Well, this year we had an “entertaining” time. The storm that hit Tahoe while we were there dumped 8 FEET of snow in 5 days. The snow was horrible on the week before we got there, and there was a large storm that came in on Wed/Thursday. We arrived Thursday at the end of the storm (luckily), got into the house, and prepared for an early day the next day
Day 1 (Friday): We skied Heavenly on Friday. It was a beautiful, clear, cold and WINDY day with fresh snow over hard ice… But it was still a nice day to be there. In all the time I spent in and around Tahoe as a kid, I never did ski Heavenly, but heard stories about the Nevada side, so we worked our way over there to see just how steep it is. It’s pretty darned steep… And to look down at the desert when you ski is kind of cool.One comment about Heavenly. Of all the places I’ve skied over the years, I’ve never spent more time walking on cat-trails than at Heavenly. There are a LOT of flat spots…. Day 2 (Saturday): After the announcement on Bay Area TV that this would be an epic weekend. We anticipated that Heavenly would be a zoo, so we drove down to Kirkwood. As we got to Caples Lake (about 2 miles from Kirkwood), traffic came to a complete standstill. It took us nearly an hour to get that last two miles. Amazing… By the time we got on the hill, it was darned near 11am. But, with as big as Kirkwood is, the crowds spread out so much that we never waited more than a couple minutes in any line. We spent a lot of time playing on Chair 6 and the face.I didn’t jump off the cornice like when I was younger, but we did spend a lot of time up on the top. The wind picked up in the afternoon to bring in the next storm, which was supposed to be a “significant”. Mona decided to try jumping off the cornice at the top of the double-black diamond run, and hurt her knee. She fell so hard that she slid right down the face of the mountain and ended up right at the top of another chairlift. Some people might say she caught an edge trying to get off the chair lift, but since no photos of the actual event exist, we can only surmise it’s from an underhanded effort to besmirch her name. Day 3 (Sunday): Well, the “significant storm” was an understatement, to say the least. It started snowing on Saturday afternoon, got bad Saturday night, and by Sunday, was pretty nuts. We tossed Rachel the keys to one car, and I drove another, to take Mona down to the hospital for an MRI. By now, the plows had created 3 foot snow burms in the middle of the street, just to get it off the highway. Rachel, being young and impetuous, decided to drive right through them in her 4×4 on the way to the hospital. Basically, this was a day at home, watching TV, playing pool, and playing Farkle. Although we “should” have been skiing, I definitely did not have a problem resting for a day. I have one comment for Rachel: It is NOT polite to ask your elders “When WAS the last time you made any points” when playing Farkle. Just sit there and smile. I know what you’re thinking… I don’t need you to actually say it out loud… 🙂 Day 4 (Monday): Well, the snow keeps flying. It was another serious snow day, and mixed with wind made skiing kind of interesting. Day 5 (Tuesday): Fly home |
Comment
Wait just one minute… We have a free house and the women are already making demands??? 🙂
Just so everybody knows, I have not seen this house. This is a friend of my Brother in Law, and I don’t know much about it other than everybody my Bro-In-Law has talked to says it’s a beautiful place. Id imagine that it has at least one bathroom, out back on the side of the hill, with a moon carved in the door. If cold toilet seats bother you, bring those chemical hand-warmer packets to set around the seat.
And I’m not to worried about you out skiing, out gambling us. I’m pretty sure that’ll happen. Outwitting us? That’s debatable… Wait until Chip replies… You’ll understand… 🙂
On a more serious note, here’s some “planning information”:
This is a house in a nice area in South Lake Tahoe, only a short distance from the center of town so we’ll be close to everything. Grocery stores, casinos, night clubs, etc.
I understand that we’re getting two cars. I have reserved one full-size car, picking up at 7pm on Thursday, returning at 7am (yech) on Tuesday. Who has made arrangements for another?
Both Chip and I took the same flight which lands at 7:02pm. What time does everybody else land?
I will update the Skiapalooza page at “http://www.parkerpress.com/?p=43” as people reply. Or, if you want, you can “register” on my site and add comments yourselves…. 🙂