Weekend and Furniture

Chilled on Saturday, went for some Costco shopping (bought a boat-load of dried mangoes), followed up with Asian groceries. Awesome to realize that they are so close to each other. We have to start planning our grocery shopping every fortnight.

It’s was snowing the whole weekend and we were hoping that we could make it to Snoqualmie (closest and relatively safest) for some skiing on Sunday. However, when we were leaving Seattle around 8:30 am, it was snowing even within the city limit. We could tell that the visibility in the mountains would be no good for driving or skiing, so we gave up

Turned around and decided to pay the French bakery on Eastlake a visit. I’ve heard Susan talk about it and finally had a chance to try their infamous croissant. It was really tasty, with crispy crust on the outside and cheese, ham and egg on the inside (think he got the breakfast combo, I just stole a couple of bites hehe). It was a nice and quiet early Sunday morning, and we were inside with warm coffee in hand, watching it snow on the Seattle streets.

As I’m moving in less than 2 weeks, I’m working hard at finding some furniture to help make my 1 bedroom apartment more comfortable and homey. Since we didn’t have anything else planned for Sunday, I convinced him to go window shopping at IKEA with me. He ended up buying a few closet organizer (FINALLY! AWESOME!) and kitchenware (I get to try out his wok before deciding on owning one yay. It’s pretty good so far $10). I realized they no longer sell the 5-color tea light candle holders that I loved (they got ruined by melted candles) but I found some other nice looking ones.

So far I’ve settled a deal for 2 outdoor folding chairs + bowl that could be used for floating candles at $20. One of my friends have a spare round table which I would check out soon. Also looking at a couple of mattresses/ couches. Mostly have to figure out the logistics and pricing; we’ll see how that goes.

hopefully this would all pan out nicely.

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.