Ski(nny) bunny. | March 25, 2009 | Comments (12)
Hello, kittens! Where have I BEEN!? Well, we got snowed in on our ski weekend, so I’ve been a bit behind on this and that. Completely snowed in, almost two feet of snow that ZERO weather reports anticipated! They had to close the lifts for 3 hrs. on Saturday because there was lightning on the mountain (boo! hiss!), but since we were stuck in Tahoe anyway, we did a half day of skiing on Sunday to make up for it. It was SO AWESOME. It really was! M was so proud of me and such a good teacher! I never fell off a chair lift, not even once, and I mastered all three types of snow you can possibly ski in (according to M) – packed snow, slushy snow and fresh powder snow! We did a whole bunch of practice runs on the bunny slopes and then M & I took an awesome, more advanced trail down on the second day. It was gorgeous. Look!
I’ll start at the beginning for those of you who aren’t sick of this story yet. When we got to the cabin on Friday afternoon after picking up my rental skis, poles and ski boots, we had about 1.5 hrs. of daylight left, so we hiked into the forest in the back of the cabin and found a mostly flat spot for me to try and ski around in. There was a lot of giggling and heavy breathing. Our friends S & S arrived with the petite just as twilight began to fall and we called it a day. We made some pasta, ate while we soaked in all the dreamy religious splendor of the cabin, then headed into the hot tub with M’s fabulous cocktails to relax.
The next morning on a bunny slope with VERY packed snow, M taught me more about skiing. She kept yelling at me to “stop doing that fancy stuff!” because apparently I was just sort of instinctively being a badass before I was ready to actually be a badass. After a few hours it began to snow lightly, M’s ears got too cold, and we headed down the mountain to get her a more suitable hat.
That’s when they closed the gondolas due to lightning and sent everyone down the mountain. That’s also when we decided it was perfect timing for a boozy 3 hr. lunch at Fire & Ice.
When we discovered that the California Base Lodge side of the mountain was still open, we all kind of just grabbed our stuff and made like bats out of hell to get over there. The light snow had turned into a snowstorm, and it was fantastic. The snow got slushy. I’d had a mimosa and a cosmo. M forgot to tell me the rules were different on slushy snow. For the first time that day, I fell on my ass! But it was slushy and actually kind of soothing, to fall. Eventually, I stopped falling, but then it was time to go home. The snow was falling even harder as we stopped to get some things for dinner and headed back to the cabin, sore but happy, and the snowfall was so pretty AND we saw a coyote on the way back.
The grownups recovered in the hot tub and with booze and muscle relaxers. We tried to watch Rachel Getting Married, but it was beyond awful.
The next morning everything was covered in almost 2 feet of snow. We checked weather reports, checked the roads, and decided we were snowed in. There was no way we were leaving on Sunday, as planned. After a few cups of coffee, we all ended up outside shoveling the driveway and getting the snow off the cars, but we couldn’t resist the temptation any longer, so we called Heavenly and got the petite into a half-day class and got ourselves half-day passes and went back out! It was incredible. Much colder, but skiing in fresh powder is something else! M and I did some new green runs, but I got super bored and we decided that I was ready for an “easy” blue run. M warned me that the thing about blue runs is that they’re much narrower, which means controlling turns is, like, essential to not dying by going over a cliff of death, etc.
And she was right.
And they get kind of steep.
Well, like really steep, but not traumatically steep.
A little traumatic.
Anyway, the first part was cake (after the arduous half-ski/half-walk it took to get on the trail) and so beautiful, and it’s where (in the photos) everything is covered up with snow and we’re way up high and you can see the lake in the back. But the last third of that trail was KILLER. We just got to a point all of the sudden where it was steep and narrow and looked like NO ONE had skied through it at all. And I fell a few times – once it almost knocked the wind out of me! – b/c M forgot to tell me that we weren’t linking our turns and just going turn-stop, turn-stop, turn-stop, so our speed wouldn’t get out of control since we had no idea what was around the next corner. Sometimes I just coasted kind of perpendicular to the slope on both skis down. Some other folks just kicked their skis off, gave up and WALKED DOWN. And then there was the German mother with her tiny baby on skis who WHIZZED past us both. I was all, “I hate that dumb baby.” So, yeah, I am somewhere in between the sad people who gave up and the dumb, fast baby: I skied the whole way down!
Anyway (I’m almost done, I swear), we get to the last leg of this crazy trail, right, and it merges into this trail that a couple of black diamond trails end with. IT IS WIDE AND STEEP AS FUCK. (For me. A beginner.) It’s called “World Cup,” for starters. I say to M, “That sounds…Olympic. I am not sure about this” and she says, “You can do it, just follow me.” Equally or just slightly less terrifying is the fact that all these SUPER fancy skiers and snowboarders are fucking RACING DOWN TOWARD YOU at indeterminate speeds. And might, like, behead you if you don’t get out of the way fast enough.
BUT I FUCKING ROCKED THAT SHIT. SO HARD.
It was bumpy (mogul-y?) and I went FAST and it was so awesome. Once we both made it down all the way, our legs were shaking and we were spent and made a beeline for the bar. It was an absolutely perfect and surprising and amazing ski weekend, and I love it so much that M is taking me back up for my birthday soon. I’m so excited. I can’t wait. I dream of it, even, it’s totally insane. We’re gonna get me my own skis and everything.
That was less confession and more novella, but I hope you enjoyed it and the photos, too!
(I’ll add a few extras tomorrow morning! It’s v. late and I must away to bedfordshire!)
Aldo, Bodashious, booze, Burton, butch, dyke, femme, Fire & Ice, gay, Heavenly, lesbian, Mary Meyer, muscle relaxers, Old Navy, queer, Rachel Getting Married SUCKS, Screamer, Sims, ski bunny, slush, snow, South Lake Tahoe, Spy Optic, TOMBOY, World Cup
SBJ @ 11:09 PM
Comments (12)
When: Tues., February 10th, 2009.
Confession: M & I went to see Milk tonight at the Piedmont Theater. It was really fantastic, so well done and well acted. It didn’t make me cry as hard as I expected! My theory is that since some of what was experienced there on screen haunts present day life for us still, it just…I don’t know, you know?
