Dude I had the most awesome weekend. Myself, Sue and Valerie rented a car (actually, we got upgraded to a kick ass SUV for an extra $5 each) and headed up to Lake Tahoe for a weekend of snowboarding, ice skating and general winter tomfoolery. The car’s less expensive with 5 people instead of 3, so we also picked up two random guys that we found on Craigslist. They chipped in with rental costs and gas and were generally helpful on the way up and down.

Lake Tahoe

I love those pointless little statistics you pick up at places when you visit. Here’s a couple of cool things about Tahoe:

• Lake Tahoe is so deep that if it were to completely empty, it would cover an area the size of California in 14 inches of water.
• It’s 97% freshwater and on a good day you can see up to 100ft in the water.
• It’s right on the border between California and Nevada with about 2/3 of the lake in California. But it means if you get up early and fancy a beer you just have to cross over to Nevada to take advantage of their 24 drinking laws.

I like to educate my readers as well as entertain.

We left around 7pm on Friday evening in our Ford Escape and headed down the highway towards Sacramento. As it was a kind of holiday, I wore shorts. For us Irish it’s practically the law that in times of holiday, shorts are mandatory. However as we got closer to Tahoe, and higher in elevation, the weather turned a little more nasty and it got very, very cold. There was both snow and ice, so much so that we had to stop at a gas station and buy snow chains for the tyres (as required by law). It took a little over 4 hours to get to South Lake Tahoe, about 180 miles but driving conditions slowed us down.

After dropping the two other guys off, we checked into a nice little motel on Lake Tahoe Blvd, near Heavenly Ski Resort. It had all the mountain furnishings - wood panelling, wooden floor and, of course, tea and coffee making facilities. Pretty cheap too, only about $20 each for the night. I got an awesome nights sleep, but a freezing cold shower in the morning thanks to a particularly annoying French girl abusing the hot water supply. I mention no names.

Snowboarding

The next day was bright and early to Heavenly. It’s often considered California’s premier ski resort. We managed to rent everything we needed - waterproof ski pants, a ski jacket and snowboard - all for about $40. Then when we got everything on, we took the gondola up to the top of the mountain.

I’ve never snowboarded (or skied for that matter) before so I was expecting to spend most of the day on my ass. As it turns out, I did fall over a considerable amount of time but generally I came away fairly unscathed and was able to make some decent progress. Best of all I had a blast doing it and despite feeling like a bear had sat on me the next day, I really want to go back and do it again.

I was particularly proud of two things that day. My first moment was flying down the mountain and not knowing how to stop, so when this little kid skis out in front of me I panicked and just fell on my ass causing my board to dig into the ground. I completely snowed the kid and stopped just in front of her and her mother, who looked more than a little upset that I had turned her little girl into Frosty the Snowman. I’ll admit, I felt bad initially and duly apologized, but afterwards I chuckled and am rather proud of my achievement.

The other moment involved a similar scenario, trying to slow down but figuring that the piled up soft snow to the side would surely decrease my velocity. Much to my demise, turning also featured on my ‘to-do’ list so I hit the snow at full speed and instead of slowing down, I simply cannoned over the top achieving a mighty impressive (and trouser browning) 5 or 6 feet in the air. Initially I landed it, but the landing completely threw off my balance and about 2 feet later I folded like an accordion, busting my knee and going down the hill on my back and facing the wrong way. When I did eventually stop though I was congratulated on my “knarly move”. For almost 2 seconds, I had fooled many people into thinking I was a professional.

As the day went on, the weather turned pretty severe and the slopes were both hard to see and hard to fall on. At 4 o’clock we called it a day and headed back, just before they closed up for the day. With the wind chill factor, the temperature was about -10 Celsius and my clothes were literally frozen. My hood wouldn’t go down because it was frozen and taking my glove off for more than a couple of minutes caused all sorts of problems getting it back on because it too was frozen stiff.

That evening, we went for sushi at the Naked Fish restaurant (try the tuna roll, mmmm). Have to say, it’s growing on me - sushi. Afterwards, we checked into a different motel. We talked the guy down a bit and managed to get an awesome room for around $30 each for the night, complete with two double beds and Jacuzzi. I spent about two hours in the hot tub with some ice cold drinks. Perfect way to end the day.

Day Two

I briefly thought about going boarding again the second day, but finally settled on it being a totally stupid idea as I was in terrible shape. Instead we went for breakfast at IHOP and went to the beach by the lake to build a snowman. As he was our first American snowman, we settled on a suitably American name for him.

Chaz proved rather difficult to build, so he’s really more of a snow invalid than a snow man. And don’t slabber about my hat - yes, it looks like a caramel dessert but it was only $1 and it serves it job.

In the afternoon, we went ice skating near Heavenly at the outdoor skating rink. Steve, I’m much better now than first year in uni! Speaking of ice-skating, they’ve got an outdoor rink on Embarcadero now in San Francisco, ooohhh. Needless to say, out of me and Valerie, I totally showed her up with my blinding array of flourishes and moves. Somebody mistook me for Christopher Dean, but I cleared up the confusion.

Finally, before heading back to San Francisco, we took a walk around one of the casino’s on the Nevada side of the city. Compared to Vegas it was pretty crappy, but still fun to see. After, we picked up our two passengers and drove back to SF in much less time than before due to better driving conditions. Got back home quite exhausted and overjoyed to discover I started work on Monday at 6am.

Think I’ll go back next weekend.

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