Tahoe Ski Day

~5.30am the alarm goes off. 6 people in the room, 1 person responds to it. HHH takes on the task of driving us there, while the rest of us passed out for the most part in the car. I have to say, having only had about 6 hours of sleep in the past 2 nights, these 3 hours of sleep was great. Arriving bright and early at 9.30am, we geared up by the car and then hit the slopes!

The condition at North Star was awesome. Every run we went on was all powder - wasn't icy at all. The view at the top of the mountain was also really breathtaking. The other thing I realized was that turns out that the black diamonds at this resort are equivalent to the blues at Whistler - which meant I actually was able to go on any run at this resort. Towards the end of the day, went on two groomed long black diamond runs. It was really nice to just carve down the hill and feeling the air rushing onto my face. What a great feeling! Great ski day overall. The other cool thing I did this time was try out a few jumps at the terrain park. Never was really into them because I always preferred just the feeling and sound of skiing down a slope, but nevertheless, decided to try it out. To my surprise, it was pretty fun. At the end of the day, I pushed myself a little bit and got quite a bit of air on the jump, but then the landing was far from perfect... lol. My first and last fall of the day.

The Hotel. We get upgraded with HHH's Diamond status to these cottage like rooms that faced Lake Tahoe. This is one perk that is pretty cool I think w/ HHH's job, though I do see how it can be pretty tough to be living at a hotel for 150+ days a year. Everyone was sooo tired, so we ended up having a few hours downtime before we went for dinner. The place we went to was a restaurant doing an American + Japanese fusion. We tried quite a bit from their menu (5 appetizers + 1 main course for each person). The lobster dogs was what sold me to want to try this place (turns out it was bread crusted lobster on a stick with this custom amazing sauce the place made). For main course, I had the duck which was made really well. Overall very nice place - though HHH never did get his steak cooked the right way, and the service was a bit slow.

Returning home, we juggled with a few ideas - Reno, gambling, drinking, chilling. But as we started up our fireplace, all of us ended up passing in and out of consciousness watching the TV. And from the lack of exercise, HHH, BJ and I were sore from the day of skiing - so we just grabbed a beer and chilled at the nice room we got. About the 3rd time I returned from consciousness on the Ottoman, we grabbed a beer and decided to go outside to the bonfire. Nobody else was here except us, so we pulled the chairs in and talked about random stuff. It felt just like old times - what a great feeling!

Then we headed to the casino at the hotel to play some blackjack. Tis was a horrible night where I lost 8 straight hands to start. It goes without saying that the drink I had at the table turned our really really expensive.

After that, played a little friendly poker, only to lose at that too. Originally thinking that I'd have another beer, I hear that the Chivas BJ and HHH brought was going to be tossed away if it wasn't finished - so I made the executive decision of drinking it all :).

I think we finally called it a night a 4am - after HHH and his friend played a see-saw battle of poker games.

Pictures are here