Wednesday, 19 February 2003

Damage Report

So I’m back in San Francisco after two days of snowboarding. I have bruises on my knees and butt and sore muscles in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles. But snowboarding is so much fun I’m already thinking about going back. But let me start from the beginning.

We left for Tahoe Saturday morning at 6:30am. Pooh had spent the night at David’s place so we could get going as early as possible. There wasn’t much traffic and we arrived at Sierra (our first ski resort) around 10:30am. First we walked up the bunny slope and I strapped on the board for the first time. One of the first things I tried was doing a turn. Of course that resulted in me eating snow. Then Pooh told me to start with the basic thing first: how to brake. I then proceeded to edge my way down the slope (without turning) to get a feel for the board. When we had walked up the slope three times we were tired of it and also pretty exhausted. So we walked back to the car for some water. Michi and I also bought a pair of wrist protectors each because we kept hurting our wrists when trying to catch a fall.

When we came back Pooh and Michi showed me how to skate after getting off a lift and took me on my first lift to the top of a beginner’s slope. Getting off the lift must be one of the scariest things for most beginners and I was a little nervous too. Of course I fell :) After making it down that slope for the first time I had decided that I didn’t like the way I had my bindings mounted to the board (goofy, right foot in front) and walked to the car again to switch that while Michi and Pooh rode the slope some more. Then I went down the slope with them a couple of times. I fell a lot, especially on my knees and butt but I managed to do a couple of turns, even two or three in a row without falling. After a couple more rides down the slopes Pooh decided to call it quits for that day because her knee started to hurt. Michi and i rode some more but after a while my knees and butt hurt so badly (I kept falling on ice) that I quit as well (the slopes were about to close anyway).

We got into the car and drove towards South Lake Taho to look for a place to stay. It took us an hour to get there because what seemed like hundred thounsands of other people had the same intention. We then spent another three hours looking for an affordable place to stay. We had totally forgotten that it was President’s Day weekend (and also Valentine’s Day Weekend) which made the prices for rooms skyrocket to unbelievable dimensions. $250 for a room for one night were not uncommon. And we’re talking just simple motels here, nothing fancy. Also motel owners dictated the prices completely at will. One motel was $150 per night when we asked at first and when we came back 15 minutes later it suddenly was $200. We were very frustrated. Finally we found a motel run by a very nice Chinese couple who offered us a room for $150 for the first night (their last vacant room) and a better room for the second night for $59. We were so exhausted from snowboarding, the room search and sleep deprivation from the night before that we just found us a random place to eat near the motel (a sandwich place that turned out to fix pretty good sandwiches) and then went to bed at 10:00pm and slept until 8:00am on Sunday.

When we woke up the next day the scenery outside had completely changed from no snow to 6 inches of snow. It was beatiful with the sun shining and all. That day we went to Heavenly which was only a five minute walk from our motel. The gondola ride up to the resort is beautiful with a gorgeous view on the lake. Heavenly is a very beautiful resort but unfortunately tailored for skiers and not for snowboarders. The first slope we tried started out very nicely and with the fresh snow falling didn’t hurt as much as it had the day before. But after a while the slope turned into this almost flat and quite narrow trail that required snowboarders to hop along or remove one foot from the binding and skate until the next drop. That was no fun at all and also very exhausting. When we finally reached the bottom of the slope we noticed that we had missed the exit to the top of the gondola. The only way to get back there from where we were was to take a lift to the very top of the mountain and then go down a very flat, narrow and long looking trail and an expert slope. We didn’t really want to push our boards again so we stopped to have lunch.

We ordered a bowl of chili each and they told us they had just run out and we would have to wait 10-15 minutes before the new one was ready. We waited but when we got back there was still no chili. So they gave us our money back and said we could still get chili in 15 minutes. We waited some more (while getting colder and colder) but the chili was still not done. So they told us we could get something else instead. So we got hot dogs. Oh well. At least they were free. By the time we were finished with lunch we were half frozen because the sun had been gone for the time we were there and a chilly wind was blowing all the time.

So we walked to the next slope (one that would take us even further away from the gondola but we weren’t going to spend a couple of hours pushing our boards along flat trails. I began to get better and managed to do quite a few turns without falling and also learned how to brake when facing the hill (i.e. with my back downhill) which I found harder than the other way around. The other slopes we did that day were better but still very narrow and sometimes quite flat. Also we had to wait half an hour in order to get on some of the lifts because there were so many people trying to get on. So I guess I won’t do Heavenly again with a snowboard. We came down to South Lake Tahoe at a different spot than where we had started but fortunately there were shuttles bringing people from one spot to the other.

In the evening we met up with a couple of Pooh’s friends, had dinner with them and spend most of the evening chatting with them. They had to leave after dinner though because they had to work the next day. They drove us back to our motel where we played a game and watched some TV before we went to bed.

Monday we did not hit the slopes because Pooh’s knee hurt too much. Instead we left town around 11am and spent over an hour in a traffic jam while trying to get out of the city. Turned out the jam was caused by a single traffic light. Argh. We had a couple of other jams on the way, so it took us 6 hours to get home instead of just three to four.

It was a great weekend and I hope I can go up there again soon. While I was there I learned:

• …how to snowboard
• …that 80% of all motels in South Lake Tahoe seem to be operated by people from India
• …that once you cross the state line from California to Nevada every hotel also has a casino inside and you get asked if you want smoking or non-smoking when you enter a restaurant
• …that there are four year old kids who can snowboard better than me
• …that there are better times to go snowboarding than a holiday weekend
• …how to operate a tissue properly to blow my nose while wearing gloves