Monday, February 27, 2006

Long Overdue Vacation

Might I begin with: Hooray for going out of town!
My superb weekend started on Friday with a note from my boss describing the raise she got for me effective today! Weee! It may sound egotistical, but I love receiving appreciation for my hard work! I was so excited on Friday that I worked an hour and fifteen minutes overtime. But upon escaping, the party could begin!
I was sort of thinking that some food and drink were in order... you know, to celebrate or whatnot. Somewhere in Berekely, perhaps... anywhere, really! The "diet" I am on leaves me pretty much starving at about four o'clock. I digress - I called my family first, to tell them the excellent news, and then I called the Jessa-Bean to see if she wanted to partake in some festivities with me since Simone was having dinner family time with her sis from out of town. She didn't answer, so I called the Logan to see what his plans were for the evening. They pretty much consisted of car-work before the trek to Twain Harte on Saturday. By the by, Jessa ended up calling me back so I found something to do! The plan was to go out drinking in Brentwood with Ben's brother and friends from out of town... but then we turned lazy. Jessa wanted to get all her online accounting homework done before our trip to the mountains (makes sense!), and that wound up taking a bit longer than anticipated. Plus there was pizza and pie for roommate Max's B-Day (that no one showed up to...) and blunts, oh my! Long story short, we rented the movie Waiting... and bought some booze and just laid back at Ben's for the evening.
At 8 in the morning on the following day, Logan, Kristen, and myself awoke to prepare for the trip! Kristen's parents bought a cabin in Twain Harte about a year ago and they were nice enough to let us use it for the weekend!
Simone and Austin met us at our house in Oakland and we were on the road around 9. We were really shooting to get up there in time for a half day run at Dodge, but it didn't so much work out that way. We made a couple of stops for food, coffee, and lift tickets before our arrival in Twain Harte. The cabin was.... well, it was a house. It was pretty immaculate, really. 4 Rooms with a total of 6 beds, 2 bathrooms, full kitchen, living room with a wood burning stove... you get the picture.
Once we were sufficiently settled, Kristen and Logan traversed to the store for food while Simone, Austin, and myself searched for means to a fire (ie, logs small enough to fit into the wood burning stove). When this didn't work, we went back to television watching and laziness! Wee! We watched the end of Punch Drunk Love before the K&L returned with a ton of delicious treats! And that's when the eating began. It pretty much didn't end until I got home on Sunday, but at least it was good food!
Ben and Jessa showed up around 8 or so and Logan had bought BBQ treats, so we grubbed pretty hard and put on Forrest Gump (the movie selection was a little on the sad side) before retiring for the night.
Ok, so today is Thursday and I still haven't finished this freakin' post! I need to write more than a sentence per day if I'll ever finish! Ha!
Sunday morning was an early one, as far as vacations are concerned! We wanted to be on the road by about 8:30 to have a full day on the mountain. It actually worked out pretty well. I showered and Kristen made yumyum breakfast. She bought Soyrizo from the market along with eggs and etc for breakfast burritos and it was de-lish! An excellent breakfast to start out an active day!
It started out as a pretty nice day, not too cold or stormy. This was sort of nice except that the snow wasn't all together awesome. It was snow, though, so I wasn't complaining so much. I almost rented a board but thought better about spending the day on my arse and got skis. It turned out to be the wiser decision because it meant I could actually hang with my friends!
Kristen used to work at Dodge Ridge about 2 years ago, so she kind of knew the ropes and took us to the back side of the mountain. It was beautiful! The snow was a little better and the lifts moved a lot faster. Not everything was open due to the lack of snow, but it was enough to play with. She took us down 2 pretty difficult runs right off the bat... I'm thinking it was not intentional, but it got me a little shakey! It seems, however, that Dodge Ridge's hard runs are the equivalent to Kirkwood's medium runs, so even the hard ones weren't too bad... it was generally just a little steep for a second and then pretty mellow after that.
Anyhoo... after playing for awhile we got hungry and met at the lodge for some warm food. We had planned on bringing a lunch with us, but it didn't so much work out that way. Warm food was better in my opinion anyways. I had Clam Chowder in a bread bowl which was actually good! Or else I was just that hungry which is equally possible. Beer was had by all before lift-ing all the way back up to the top.
The damn lift at the bottom was so slow! Plus, it had started storming during our lunch break so it was also freezing and snowing. By the time we reached the top we were covered in snow and shivering. We managed to make it down to the back side of the mountain again for one more lift before closing. I wasn't sure how much more I could endure, it was so cold. I've probably been in colder ski conditions in the past, but in comparison to the earlier portion of the day, this was pretty bad! It was windy, which made it very difficult to see and my chin was so cold I was trying to ski with the bottom half of my face in my jacket.
Needless to say, I ditched them all to get to the bottom via the fastest means possible. The burning in my legs was intense, but I made it down in one piece and retuned my rented gear in time to meet up with Ben and Logan in the lodge getting hot chocolate.
We made it home... unfortunately all the coffee shops were closed, but Simone, Jessa, and Austin had been on excursions throughout the day that involved buying non-decaf coffee (which Kristen had mistakenly bought the day previous) so yay!
Eventually we made it back to Oakland and I watched some Grey's Anatomy before hitting the hay! Logan and Kristen stayed up for another day (to themselves), so I had a nice big quiet and peaceful house.
Ok... so I know the post got a wee vague toward the end, but I want to get this up and posted before this weekend arrives!
Tata for now, my loverlies!
*RM*

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