First Official Night at My New Apartment

After the big move last Saturday, and countless shifting of stuff from Wallingford over to my new apartment in Eastlake, couple of shopping trips, and several nights of slow unpacking, I am finally staying over for the very first time.

So far so good.

Despite the fact that there’re still boxes lying around the place, the kitchen looks too clean, and the shower curtain rod is still at risk of falling down any time, that I have 2 beds in my bedroom and I’m typing while sitting on my little bed… I’m overcoming my fear and angst against the new apartment and the new furniture (including the stupid bed scam that I got into).

Skiing at Crystal Mountain with all my brand new gears tomorrow with sister. o so exciting~ It’s gonna be sunny!!

I’m still… not sleeping yet. Have to be up in 5 hours…

Ski @ Stevens Pass

Went skiing at Stevens Pass on Saturday with Adriana and Ani. It was snowing like nuts. After the fact I realized my sister went to Stevens Pass on Sunday as well and the road condition was much better that day -_-|||

Adriana is a visiting scholar from Brazil so she hasn’t seen as much snow as we had before, not to mention skiing. We spent 3 hours driving to Stevens Pass. It’s typically a 2-hour drive but took much longer because my little ford focus needed chains and I couldn’t drive more than 30 mph with those on. Meanwhile other big SUVs/ AWDs/ trucks swooshes by on the shoulder at 80 mph. Scccaarrry! When we finally made it, Ani and I spent a couple of hours getting Adriana a head start before her skiing lesson in the afternoon.

She did pretty well and fell very little, but the gears tired her out so we took a lunch break. I didn’t get breakfast before we came out so I was starving for a mucho macho nacho Meanwhile both Adriana and Ani enjoyed their burgers and curly fries.

After we send Adriana off to skiing lessons, we took off for a few blue runs. It was snowing really hard and very cold the whole time.

On and all it was a fun day at Stevens; can use a little less snow on the road.

Crystal Mountain Last Sunday

It was lots of fun meeting up with my cousin and sister and their significant others last Sunday for skiing. I haven’t seen the cousin for 8 years but it turned out pretty well.

I was the greenest skier in the group but they were patient and considerate, doing mostly green and some blue runs, slowing down to wait for me in case I need help picking up loose gears. My sister is a pretty experienced skier so she taught me how to use the ski poles to time turns and how to come down steeper slopes, which would eventually bring me up to the black diamond level. For a 4th time skier, they said I had pretty good form and skied fairly well. At one point we were going to give a black diamond a try but it turned out to be too foggy, so we came down a green instead.

The mountain is much bigger than Snoqualmie Pass. It has more and much longer runs, so it’s less crowded. It snowed the whole of last week and during the time when we were there, so the condition was really good (especially when compared to the sunny/ icy/ slushy days in Snoqualmie).

My First Black Diamond Run (Sort of)

We skied in Snoqualmie Pass on Saturday. It was very sunny and warm. We left Seattle around 7:45 and started skiing around 9. The runs were very icy, with tire marks from grooming. We did various blue runs in the morning and took a break for lunch. Baked potato with chili’s and cheese and bacon bits was awesome for lunch

We then took the shuttle to go from the Central to West summit to try out different runs. After a long wait in the sun the shuttle finally arrived and we took off for West. Since we weren’t familiar with the runs in West, we ended up in a green run and some overly easy blues. Then I discovered that a run that goes from West back to Central which looks like a bunch of traversing and coming back out from the middle of Central.

“No wait at the shuttle and no hauling gears around? Awesome!” I thought.

We started off traversing to the far right of West arriving at the lift of a black diamond run “Wildside” (and for a good 5 – 10 minutes I was standing in the middle of the mountain looking for him, who disappeared in sight after falling). After getting off the long lift ride we had to go down a steep, narrow and swirly path. He wasn’t very comfortable in his skis yet so he was slowly side-stepping down after another girl who also seems to be having some trouble. I figured it’s just going to take a bit of control (i.e. braking) to go down the small and narrow slope once they’re off, and it worked out nicely. We then continue to traverse on the fairly narrow trail (where beginners tend to fall and block the way) through a tree line and came out to the open – mid-slope of a black diamond run in West summit

He decided to take off his skis and slide down on his butt, while I was observing others struggling downhill with skis and snowboards alike and figured there must be a way to go down with maximum control and minimum falling (reeeeally don’t want to lose my skis and ski poles like I did earlier on a blue run mid slope on a black diamond; this black run was also where we saw, in previous week, an off-leash snowboard flew off the mountain and all the way down to the restaurants). He probably spent 1/3 to 1/2 the time I used to come down – I continued to struggle mentally mid slope for another 5- 10 minutes, then decided to follow path of another struggling lady (“I’m just trying to figure out how to get down safely” “me too”). I traversed slowly to the far right, paying attention to skiers/ riders flying/ falling downhill while trying to go as far low as possible without picking up uncontrollable speed. I was almost half way down when I hit the tree line/ side of valley and can’t quite go any farther without turning around. But there was a group of snowboarders who happened to have fallen right where I would fly straight towards if I were to turn around, so I waited and waited until they got up and continued.

The rest is mostly history; I turned around, ran straight over where the riders were, somehow tripped and had my 1 fall, filled the back of my pants with slushy snow but managed to keep all my gears on, I got up and let go of fighting the mountain and managed to the bottom of the slope, and complete the final stretch of the run, which is a green run.

yay we survived :’)

Had An Awesome Time Skiing Yesterday

Went for our 2nd day of skiing yesterday. We took the 3rd day class of the 3-day series course they offer (he skipped the 2nd day I skipped the first). Spent about 4 hours in the morning doing mostly green runs (bunny hills) and a borderline blue run (it has a steep slope into the beginning of a green run). Got pretty comfortable and close to doing parallel skis and linking turns. After the class in the afternoon, we both moved on to Central Express and did a few variations of blue runs. It starts much higher up the mountain and opens up my view of the true Snoqualmie Pass.

Had a few falls through out the day, mostly to avoid colliding with other skiers/ small children who has no idea/ control where they are going.

Anyways, pretty happy and excited that I have braved my first blue runs, overcome fear of steep slopes and maneuvered around the mountain. Think I have some good potentials

Looking forward to skiing with Susan and Natalie in a couple of weeks. Think I will be good enough to ski with them by then. Hopefully I’d have time to ski at least once more. Planning on using my last class to try snowboarding again. Perhaps this time around I would have better understanding of how boards/ skis work on the mountain and can overcome my fear and be a better rider.