Ski Trip 2010

This past weekend was not only Valentine’s day weekend and Chinese New Year’s; but for a few of us, this was the 10th annual ski trip. And because mother nature decided to bring her fat foot into the works, we’re now down to only two of us that has made every trip to date. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be the one that misses it. Regardless, it was a good trip. We had a good number of new additions to the trip’s roster, and we made our first return to a house we’ve previously stayed. The weather stayed clear and sunny, which meant no new snow, but made for great driving conditions and nice ski days.

The drive up was fairly uneventful. Angel, Nicky, and Art stayed over at the house and we woke up around 4:30 in the morning and headed up to Hollywood to pick up Brandon. Most folks slept while I drove up. With the weather so nice, there were no delays on the roads and we made amazing time, even with a stop. We were out of LA by 6 and reached Sacramento by 11. I headed straight to Tower Cafe, our usual lunch site upon reaching Tree City. Hugo and Beanie trade personalities upon getting into the car. Beanie whines until I allow him to sit on my lap. He feels the need to sit up with the driver. Getting out of the car in Sactown, we realize the folly of wearing black as we’re now covered in corgi hair. Fun times.

Tower Cafe is one of my favorite restaurants when I lived in Sactown. Nothing really changes about the place, not even the waiter that took our order, as I remember him from years back. We arrived a little bit too early as they were just finished serving breakfast and it was half and hour before they started serving lunch, so we ordered some drinks and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Italian sodas, coffees, and pear ale.

After lunch, we head out to the Costco in Folsom to pick up the majority of supplies for the weekend. With food supplies in hand, we reorganize the car so that we can fit everything. And because of how some of us travel, we had a very full load for the last leg of the trip up to Tahoe.

The car looked like this with the dogs trapped up front:

Why? Because some folks feel the need to pack their entire household for a 5 day trip… As opposed to the rest of us, packing only what we need. And as a simple example, here’s a comparison picture of my luggage with that of one who shall not be named.

Since five of six from the east coast crew didn’t make it due to snowpocalypse, and the sac crew were not coming up until the next day, it was only 6 of us. I made great time up the mountain as traffic was light, weather was amazing, and even though I’m driving up in a mini van, I’m still flying by most folks on the road. I keep deluding myself with the notion that I’m a timid driver. I get the keys to the house and upon arrival, we unpacked, relax, and just hung out enjoying the house. Having no one to pick up at the airport, we made it up to the house the earliest I’ve ever made it; there was still a considerable amount of daylight. It was a little cloudy the first day, but little to no precipitation. A small group of us headed out to the Nevada side to pick up Ciprian who had just arrived at Mont Blu. He’s the only one out of the 6 east coasters that made it out.

We enjoyed a meal of lamb chops, a rack of ribs, and some salad. And didn’t do much else for the rest of the evening. Art finds a fire pit outside and picks up some starter wood and for the next few days, sits outside alone staring into the dancing flames. His fascination with it is just about idiotic as it’s about 30 degrees outside. We do manage to fire up the hot tub and use it that night. I stayed up to about 2:30 when Dave and Charissa showed up after getting into Reno from Colorado around 11 and driving up to the house. Once they arrived, I headed up to my room and crashed.

The next morning, we woke up around 7 or so, and I made waffles, some over cooked omelettes, and bacon. I eat a banana in addition to the eggs and waffles and get the gear ready for a day of skiing. I chuckle to myself as Art tells me that he’s bringing a banana in his camel pack. Standing there, I could have just grabbed a Tupperware box and cut up the banana so that it wouldn’t get smashed, but I figured it’d be funnier if I just kept quiet and waited for the funny to happen naturally. We headed out to Kirkwood, and again with the nice weather, our drive was quick and painless. We got there in half an hour. I had forgotten my regular point and shoot camera so all the pictures and videos are form my Droid.

Oh yeah, that’s a rabbit hat. ‘Tine had given that to me for xmas, and I figured I’d at least use it. I mean, I have soft balls on my chin! How could I possibly pass up wearing this utterly emasculating piece of head gear?

Comments heard through out the weekend:

• OMG, where did you get that awesome hat? (chick working lift)
• Wow, that’s rather emasculating (random guy)
• OMG, look at that guys hat! (random girl)
• HAHA, it’s a snow bunny, get it? (random mom when her son pointed out how cool the hat was)
• So where are your eggs? (guy working lift)
• Where did you get that hat? (Art and about 20 other people)
• Cool hat!(most folks around me while waiting in lift lines or sitting on the lifts)

Responses I uttered…

• No idea, the ex-gf picked this up for me, probably as a ward against chicks
• YEP!
• Wanna play with the balls on my chin?
• You know, I could impale your son with my skis at this distance
• In my ass, ya want one?
• No idea, it was a gift from my ex
• Yep, hey look, I have balls on my chin… wanna touch them?

My glove kept getting into the way for some of the pictures as I use the Droid as my camera while at Kirkwood. The following is a view from the back side of Kirkwood and a few shots of us on the lifts. Right off the bat, I take the guys down a few black diamonds for a warm up. Brandon doesn’t believe me when I tell them that they’re blues and then proceeds to show me that the runs we did were indeed blacks according to the trail map; oops. Well, everyone there can easily handle it. We also take the bowl and the folks enjoy it so we run it a few times before heading to the other side of the resort.

With how often Brandon has his camera out, you’d think he was Asian. It was either bright or these dummies just blinked when the camera flash went off, no wait… never mind. While resting, Brandon goes and grabs a hotdog and water. Art and I make fun of his 8 dollar meal that costs a buck fifty at costo; Brandon’s response was “so where’s costco” touche Brandon, touche. Art opens his pack to get some beef jerky, and discovers a mess of smashed banana. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I tell him my thought about cutting it and putting it tupperwear, and he calls me an asshole for not telling him. Lesson’s learned through experience are always so much more impressionable than those heard off the experience of others. Besides, it was pure hilarity to see him pull the smashed fruit from his backpack.

Here are a few more pictures from Kirkwood as we stayed for the rest of the day at the back side of the resort. As the day wore on, Brandon and Art got more accustomed to the snow and with that, more confident and started hitting nothing but blacks (wow, taken out of context, that could sound horrible). Art took a drop off a cornice and was just a ball of snow as he tumbled down on his first attempt. He was much more successful on his second and next several runs off it. I just enjoyed the amount of speed I could pick up on that run.

Video of Art as he glides down.

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We stayed until the lifts stopped operating and went home. Getting home, I went straight to the kitchen to make dinner. Tonight was Italian night, and on the menu was lasagna and my creamy Chicken Marsala. Angel spent the day making his creamy mushroom soup. His soup is DAMN GOOD. Ciprian grabbed Dave’s rental and spent the day at the casinos. Keith got into town around 6 and headed back to the house with Ciprian for dinner.

Spinach lasagna noodles, ragu, béchamel, cheese, repeat.

With plenty of folks helping out, Angel gets a break from being my kitchen bitch while I cook. The discussions are always lively, and eventually everyone is thrown under the bus at one point or another, some more than others. Monica earns a new nickname as she was trying to figure out what a really Americanized Filipino would be called. As she’s not really “Asian” according to my standards; they’re more like Mexicans of the south Pacific; so calling herself a banana doesn’t work. Monica is now affectionately known as our “Dirty Banana”.

We were too hungry to bother taking more pictures, and the lasagna was destroyed leaving one square. We went over board with the pasta, and should have only cooked one box. I blame Cam, but what can you do; give a monkey two pieces of shit, he’ll throw two pieces of shit…

Again, Art goes out and plays with the fire pit, alone.

A group of us started drinking while the rest of the pansies watched the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics. As tired as I was, I made for a quick drunk that night. The new folks threw nickels and drinking commenced. I crashed around 10:30 and woke up early the next morning to make breakfast and get ready for the second ski day.

Waffles, omelettes with shallots, sliced up chicken marsala, and pepper jack cheese, and bacon was made. This time the omelettes were not over cooked. I made the last minute call to hit up Homewood instead of going to Northstar as we had originally planned. We were going to meet up with a friend of Art’s at Northstar, but I made the call to change our location to Homewood. Homewood is a smaller resort and one of my favorite places to ski because of the amazing views and the fun I have tree skiing there. It was already 9 am and the drive to Northstar would take a little over an hour, and I surmised that it would be utterly packed there as Northstar is one of the bigger resorts on the north side of the lake. Our drive was about half an hour. Weather was nice so I didn’t have to worry about getting trapped to run around the lake like we did last year when an avalanche closed hwy 89 south back to South Lake Tahoe.

The sac crew came up as well, but I lost them on the drive up. They were only a few cars behind me, but after losing sight of me, they thought they lost me for good. I watched them drive by us in the parking lot getting to a space a few spots down from us. They had no idea we were parked a few spots away. I didn’t see them all day, but a few from our group saw them randomly through out the day. They ended up leaving around 3 or so back to the house.

We pretty much run non stop for the first half of the day.

We eventually get separated, Dave and his girl split from me, Art, and Brandon. And Brandon gets separated from Art and I. So I make Art head into the trees with me. Again, one of the things I love most about Homewood is the trees. They are not so bunched up, but are close enough to give you that trill while traversing through them. The powder is deep and it’s amazingly soft in certain areas. There is nothing like blazing your own trails, squeezing through soft branches of pine leaves, and getting a damn good workout while twisting and turning through forest. And the fucking view! Even Heavenly doesn’t get this good a view to the lake.

Video as we run through trees.

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Only Art would take smoke breaks while we ski/board. Art and I meet up with Brandon when he finds us back on the north side of the resort. We continue to run and bring Brandon through the trees and several black diamonds. After every run, Art suggests that he’ll take it easy and stay away from the trees, however, once we get off the lift, he cannot but help himself and follows me as I head directly into the nearest clump of trees. Overhead behind me is Brandon exclaiming that he cannot do jumps as he hits a set of jumps I go through, but when he lands them; says, “well, I guess I can do them”. The second attempt however didn’t fare as well as the first. The three of us never see Dave and Charissa for the rest of the day, but we run until about 3:30. Brandon wipes out hard at the end of the last run and he and I call it while Art heads back up to take the face run as his last run. Dave and Charissa meet up with us at the very end of the day. It was a damn good day, and even without having a banana in the morning, I was fine. My legs were tired, but they didn’t lock up on me once. Guess I wasn’t pushing hard enough.

Driving back, there are always people that shouldn’t be on the road, or they should just pull over on the numerous turnouts to let everyone that actually know how to drive pass them. So while driving back, a huge 4X4 catches my eye as he immediately jumps out of the lane crossing a double yellow into the oncoming lane and passes one car and quickly jumps back in line narrowly avoiding a full head on crash with the oncoming car. And I look and notice that the lead car, a Honda Accord is driving way under the speed limit. I’m three or four cars behind, the 4X4 right behind the accord and as soon as a passing lane comes up, he guns it and is off. I debate for a second if I even want to bother passing as a few miles ahead, I’ll be stopping anyways because I want to show the folks Emerald bay and the cool little building on top of an island in the middle of the bay. The thought comes and goes and I gun it. I’m driving a Honda Odyssey; it’s a friggin mini van. I pass all four cars and as I pass the Accord, Art rolls down the window and screams at the Accord to just pull over. And we take off. Getting to our stop no more than 5 minutes away, everyone gets out to see the trail of cars that come down the pipe after us. No sign of the Accord, but there is a line of cars driving down at a decent speed. 10 minutes elapse and the folks say they finally saw the Accord. Haha, I guess they took what Art had to say to heart. We head over and snap a few pictures before getting back into the car and heading back.

Heading back to the house, we stop by a few grocery shops to pick up ingredients for an artichoke dip that Charissa wants to make. It’s utterly amazing and we quickly finish it as soon as it’s out of the oven. Since tonight was steak night, I could take a break and soak in the hot tub for a bit before making dinner. Italian night required a tad bit more in terms of prep and cooking time and I missed my chance to take a dip in the hot tub the previous night. We soaked in the tub and made gay jokes about Cam. Apparently, Cam set off the gaydars on Angel, Nicky, Dave, Charissa, and Brandon; hilarious. Taking a count of how people want their steaks done, everyone is on the medium rare boat with one medium. I make two mediums just in case.

The remaining two racks of ribs are thrown into the oven with the home made BBQ sauce. And the steaks are taken out to the grill. Setting my trusty timer, I go and check on the steaks after about seven minutes, and lo and behold, the damn grill is off. It’s out of fucking gas. *sigh* Ok, plan B. All the pans in the house are placed on the 5 burners and the steaks are thrown onto the pans. Flipped once, then pulled off and placed into the microwave(off) to rest with a slice of bree on each steak. Angel’s mushroom soup is heated up, and once the steak sauce is put together, the ribs are pulled from the oven and everything is served. Art is too tired to chew so it’s his first time not finishing a steak. The silveroak is uncorked and we enjoy the dinner with Keith and I explaining to the crew the origins of this gathering. Sharing tales of past gatherings, past ski trips, and stories about “the one” from various ski trips and why they earned the coveted title. And oh yes, there is ALWAYS “the one” at every ski trip; the 10th year anniversary is of no exception. But more on that later. Not having full sets of steak knives forced us to be a little creative. The ribs were pretty much polished off, and only a few people were unable to finish their steaks.

Those steaks were saved and stored for the following morning’s breakfast. The rest of the night was spent playing rockband beatles and regular rockband. Art crashed around 10:30. Most of the folks ended up crashing fairly earlier as well, leaving only Joe, Dirty Banana, Brandon, Angel, Ciprian, and I hanging out playing rockband. I hope we kept everyone up with douche chills from our horrific attempts at singing. I gave Keith my spot next to Art in the upstairs master bedroom so I took the couch downstairs. Beanie ended up sleeping on my chest, my feet, etc and Hugo took the other couch. With the dry air and the heater up, I kept waking up to drink water to keep from completely turning into a human raisin.

The alarm woke me up at 7:30 and another meal of fresh waffles and omelettes was prepped. This time, Angel had sliced up the remaining peppers and onions, so in addition to the shallots, I added those, the last bits of chicken from the night before last, and cut up bits of steak from the previous night. The main slabs of left over steak was thinly sliced up and plated to replace the bacon that was had the previous two mornings. The last bits of the Marsala sauce was also employed over the omelettes that sandwiched some fairly spicy pepper jack cheese. Nicky who hates eggs had several servings for as she exclaims, she cannot taste any egg. Waffles, omeletts, sliced steak, and momosas:

It is a fairly lazy morning and we sit around debating on hitting the slopes. Dave and Charissa head out and go exploring after Charissa drops Ciprian and Keith off at the casinos. Tropic Thunder is thrown into the ps3 and we watch the whole movie. We decide to just take a trip around the lake to sight see. I force Nicky to come along with us, as Angel says he’s interested. Until this point on the trip, Angel and Nicky have yet to leave the house in any capacity save quick jaunts outside that last minutes. They were enjoying their time of doing absolutely nothing. It would complete things if the porch had a swing, I’d have a picture of her sitting on the porch…

Snow corgis, pictures taken before we headed out for the lake jaunt.

We head out and our first stop is Emerald Bay to check out the little castle on the island in the middle of the bay. We had dropped by this place the previous day on our way back form Homewood, but lighting wasn’t that great so pictures didn’t come out too great. We stopped first on one side to get a different angle on the island.

We stopped at the other side and it was crowded. But we got a few good pictures of the island from this spot. We were right above Vikingsholm for which the “tea house” on the little island is a part.

And a few shots of us.

Nicky pointed out a nice little waterfall that was pretty much right below where we stopped at the first angle. To get a better picture, I climbed over the wall and walked through some snow to get a decent angle. One of the steps dropped my leg down to my knee in snow. I heard nothing but bouts of laughter when my leg dropped. Fun times. I got some damn nice shots.

And off we went around the lake. We ended up stopping at the north point of the lake for some lunch. We hit up the Indian (dot dot, not woo woo) run McD. And it was at this point that Angel started to feel strange. Things were fuzzy and he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. It could have been food poisoning, but no one else in the group got sick. We tried to hang out so he can get some air and possibly have the feeling pass, but that wasn’t working. Some local guys were there with their snow boards and one screamed down the hill towards the lake and jumped onto a rail that lead to some boat docks. Pretty damn impressive. We were directly across the lake from where we were staying. It’s a clear shot of Heavenly ski resort; where we would have been if we could muster up the motivation to hit it a third day. I think if the east coast crew were here, we would have definitely hit Heavenly.

We stopped at another place with some rest rooms so that Angel can try throwing up what he ate. To entertain ourselves, we started making snow balls and attempted to get them into the trash can that’s several feet away. Down by the lake Brandon decided that he needed to show up the family a few yards away skipping rocks. While watching the father figure teach his son to skip rocks and skipping them 3 or 4 skips, Brandon exclaims that he can do much better, and grabs a rock and does the following on his first throw:

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Damn show off.

Angel is still not feeling well, so we head back to the house. Angel and Nicky are dropped off at the house and Art, Brandon and I head out to the casinos. We park right next to Cam’s parent’s Avalanche, such a rare SUV to see out on the roads; oh that’s right, it’s a piece of shit; never mind. We head into Mont Blu and find Ciprian waiting to start up a Texas Hold’em tourny. We find Cam, the Dirty Banana, Joe, and Keith near the smoke shop. They’re heading over to Harrah’s as is the place Art wants to go gamble at, so we take the short jaunt over. Wild Bills is closed. Apparently they closed last month. No escape from the horrific economy, even while on vacation.

We wander around a bit at Harrahs, and I plop myself down at the $15 paigow table. It’s about 5:30 pm now. I pull a hundred from my wallet and start playing. Shortly, Art comes by and watches for a bit then joins me when the Korean fellow and his girl with fablous looking breasts leave. Orders of Grey Goose & Soda start for Art. Our first dealer is relieved shortly after we start playing with an older blond dealer that has about as foul mouth as I, we get along great. She even opens up a spot on her availability for Art on Wednesday, snide Weiju jokes are made, as a comparison to how things would feel with the dealer; the leather glove was mentioned. The dealer is VERY talkitive and taking her bloody sweet time dealing. Not an issue for us as it’s a slow game regardless. Hell, Art fell asleep during one hand as she’s explaining the history of St. Valentine. NO ONE FUCKING CARES BITCH! JUST DEAL! But she’s making mistakes by not taking the bonus/envy money chips when the players don’t hit a 3 of a kind or better. She’s warned by the pit boss; but even afterwards, I notice a few more slip ups. In short order, she’s relieved with what I will refer to as the “cooler”.

The guy’s a seasoned dealer, and with how he throws cards, chips, etc, and his quickness at reads; he’s obviously one of their seasoned craps dealers. No real streaks, my chip stack roller coaster, but I never need to pull more money. Most times I’d be up 100+ over my initial, or down to about 50 at my lowest. Grey Goose Soda’s continue as Art starts to learn the game better, albeit getting less and less sober as minutes pass. The cooler isn’t working so he’s relieved. A flip kid comes and plays, then leaves, then returns, each time, he gets carded. We openly laugh at him each time he gets carded. A hot tall blond chick walks by and exclaims how much she loves the game and wants to watch. The guy she’s with says he wants to use the restroom, so she responds that he can go and t hat she’ll stay here and watch. We all laugh loudly at him and exclaimed that he’s a bitch and got called out. He walks over and grabs the blond and drags her away. HAHAHAHA stupid cave man can’t take a joke.

A young chinese kid sits down and plays. He’s later joined by his group of friends one of whom is a decent look chinese woman; and upon incouragement from the kid, me, and Art, she sits down and starts to play. She’s decent looking, but looks about our age. We quickly name her Mini Weiju. Because in about 5 to 6 years, she’ll probably have that Weiju look to her. Leather glove joke makes yet another appearance. She starts to play and says she’ll only play a few rounds. When the rest of their entourage arrives, she says she’ll quit when she loses; proceeds to lose that hand, but places more money for the next hand. She then says she’ll quit after this round, about 10 times before actually getting up. Addicts are so much fun to watch and poke fun at. During all this, I take a quick look at her entourage, only a few stand out; her sister, a chubbier version of MW and her cute friend are behind us. There are some guys with them, but they’re never part of the conversations. Brandon is behind me watching and learning the game. MW wants to ask about something but is fearful of rejection, so Art loudly, and drunkely asks what they want. They want to get some used cards, but the dealer isn’t entirely sure if they do that, so she says they may sell them. MW quickly says that her sister is pretty much a Jew, but not in so many words. The pit boss over hears the conversation and says that with the casino card and id, they can get the used cards free from the rewards kiosk. The cute girl of the group is about to run off to get some cards when Art quickly hands over his driver’s license and player’s card. As soon as she takes off, Art turns to me and asks if he just gave his ID to a complete stranger. “Yes Art, you did, now hurry up and play your damn hand”.

A hand later, the cutie returns and hands Art a deck of cards as well as his player’s card and ID. I laughed and suggested that the should have sold him his card back. He pockets the items then grabs $.50 from the table and proceeds to hand it over to the cute chick as if she were some cheap waitress. I mean, at least the cocktail waitresses were getting dollars. She politely denies the poorly offered money for services rendered, and Art tries again, but with a dollar chip, but this is met with the same response. Art then throws a 5 dollar chip onto MW’s bonus as a means to pay for the cards. I wonder how much of this Art actually remembers. MW orders a vodka soda, for which Art scoffs and orders another Grey Goose Soda, MW’s eyes light up and asks if she could do that and changes her order. A little chatting later and we discover they’re in a ghetto cabin; we suggest they come over and hang out with us. Art hands over his phone so that they can imput their number. I laugh, apparently since they returned his ID, he can trust them with his phone. I suggest that they quickly just put in what ever fake number they can think up on the spot and be done with it. But no, they actually use Art’s phone and actually calls up MW (Diana). Too easy. We get Art’s phone back and Art lets Brandon and I know that we’ll need to call them later as he won’t be in any state to do so. They leave and we continue to play.

The table min moves from 15 to 25, at about 9 PM but we’re still playing 15 until the dealer changes out. The dealer boffs that the 15 min will only last about 10 minutes, “if that” until she gets relieved. An hour goes by, and she’s still not relieved yet, and she’s starting to complain to the pit boss. Apparently the removal of our talktive dealer has caused a rift in the system. Art’s 12 drinks in, and down a bit and decides to hit the slots so he leave. As soon as he leaves, I get hot. I lose a few hands, but even my paigow hands are winning. Crazy. I’ve been playing 20 for a while now, even before the last 15 min dealer came around; as I just don’t want to deal with quarters. The dealer finally gets a reprieve and we get a new dealer. Right off the bat, she gets 3 paigow hands in a row. The money tray needs to be refilled as apparently, we’re doing quite well against the house that night. Towards the end of the night, I hit a straight flush, with the envy bonus, it’s a 50-1 payout for a straight flush, and everyone with the envy button gets 20 bucks. Not too shabby. I had two pairs and split them, but ended up losing the hand to the dealers two pairs. But then again, I won 250 in that hand of 5 bucks. I played several more hands that continued to raise my chip count. Art’s stumbling around and I suggest we take off. I color out and I’m at 642 or something, I leave the 42 for the dealer and cash out. Not too bad a night. While walking out the door, Brandon’s chatting more than usual, so apparently, he’s had a few to drink too. He’d take one for the team and hit the fatty. In the car Art calls the number and it goes to voice mail, I just leave our address and we hang up. It was 11 PM so it’s doubtful anything eventful would happen. We get back to the house and they’re watching District-9. It seems like everyone had a pretty mellow night. They didn’t even do a group dinner, and just at snacks.

It had been a long time since I actually got to gamble for any length of time, and it felt good to relenquish the need to play leader or decision maker. I’m sure I could have gathered everyone for a last group dinner; but dammit, I had a great time just gambling with Art and having Brandon hang with us. I should have made him take me to the roulette table where women in lingere were running the roulette table. Art passes out on the floor upstairs. Brandon snaps a few shots before he and I scourage the house for some food as we haven’t eaten dinner either. District 9 ends and Brandon pops in Big Trouble in Little China, then proceeds to pass out on the couch not really remembering doing all that until the next morning. Art passes out on the couch. I do some quick packing and head up to sleep.

More waffles in the moring to finish off the last of the eggs and butter milk. The house is cleaned and we get ready to check out. Earlier, I took Ciprian to Mont Blu so that he can catch the shuttle to Reno for his flight back to New York. With the house cleaned up, the cars were loaded up and we snaped a group picture. We’ll have to photoshop Ciprian back in at a later date, but for now.

The drive back wasn’t too eventful. The dogs sorta slept. Art kept me company for most of the trip, he played text tag with MW. She’s from San Jose but apparently comes down to LA quite often…. I’d like to see what the girl looks like with out fuzzy alcohol goggles, but Art’s much more curious than I.

All pictures taken with various cameras are here: http://gamerabaenre.com/ski_trips/skitrip2010.htm Hopefully people will send me the pictures they took and I can add to the album.

Even without the east coast crew, the trip was enjoyable. I admit that the days leading up the to trip, I was dreading it and in a really poor mood because the east coast folks couldn’t make it. I was doubting my motivation to even want to hold another ski trip next year. I’m still debating that with myself today, but not so much now as before the trip. But this was definitely a good trip. The sad part is that because this was such a good trip, the east coast crew missed out. Each trip has it’s own flavor and they are absolutely distinguishable from one another. While some were good, other were not as great. This was a good trip, and with the east coast crew, I can only imagine how much betterer this could have been. The flip side of this coin is that it could have been worse too, but I’m an optimist at heart.

That being said, some of you folks that know the history of the trip, have been part of these trips, are still wondering, who is “the one”. Well, as painful as it is for me to name this person, a few of us at the trip recognized that legitimately, the one can only be Brian this year. Granted the east coast crew got snowed in and couldn’t make it and it was for all intents and purposes out of their hands; Brian’s our “one” this year. This missing presence was clearly felt by those of us who have been on this trip. I know that my motivation was clearly thrown for a loop. For 9 years there is a stability, and out of no where, that pillar of stability is removed. It’s something that sort of knocks the wind out of you with it comes in from left field. I hope there will be a next year’s ski trip, if not, it was a damn fine run.