playing outside

it has been a fantastic last few days in tahoe! we arrived on the 31st and went skiing at boreal, a small hill right off of i-80. it was the perfect place to get my legs used to skis again after a six years (!!!) of not skiing. we laid low on new years and after watching the ball drop and toasting each other, we all passed out immediately.

on new year's day we were up early and went to squaw valley. while one would expect the slopes to be packed on a holiday, it wasn't actually too bad. unfortunately, however, nicole took a bit of a spill coming off the lift mid-day and ended up being taken out of commission for the rest of the trip. while she was waiting for x-rays and such in the clinic, the rest of us took a few more runs and then we all headed back to the cabin.

our cabin, i should say, was great. it was a 3-bedroom, 2-bath place in truckee and had a large family room with a stove fireplace in the middle. when the fire was roaring, it was over 80 degrees in the room at any given time. the kitchen was pretty big, which was good because we cooked all our breakfasts and dinners in, and there was a hot tub on the back porch, although we only got in once because it was too hot after about 5 minutes.

we took january 2 "off" to give our legs a rest. this ended up being perfect because the weather was pretty crappy. i woke up early and realized there was some sort of precipitation falling outside. it started as rain and then progressed to snow. thinking that it would be cool to have a picture of the cabin in the snow, i rushed outside to take a picture. at that point, the house looked something like this:

i think i was a bit too eager though because less than an hour late, the cabin looked like this:

it was a pretty nice treat to actually be in snow while it was snowing! that afternoon we went to explore king's beach and incline village. after dinner, we we made smores with our stove fireplace.

yesterday, we spent the day skiing at alpine meadows, and i had a really great day. i spent the morning skiing with jeremy, ginger and scott (three of the people i was skiing with all weekend), and i met up with kristie, one of my roommates from college, for lunch. she had other mit friends with her as well who ended up knowing mark, the friend that i went cycling up to point reyes with a couple weeks ago. small world. the picture to the left was taken yesterday on the trail (i don't recall its name) which leads from the front to the backside of alpine meadows. if you're into ungroomed, powdery terrain, i highly recommend getting to the sherwood lift at alpine meadows--it services the backside of the mountain and after discovering it, we spent most of our time over there.

i was a little annoyed because i didn't bring my cross country skis up with me and after arriving, i discovered that there was a fairly sizeable cross country area three miles down the street from the cabin. i know now for next time. otherwise, as i said, i had a great weekend. it was nice to see friends from college, and i loved being outside all day. i discovered that i can still tolerate cold weather...as long as i put on enough layers (i wore running tights, long johns and ski pants all at once, but hey, at least i wasn't cold).

i'm looking forward to heading back to austin on tuesday. i feel like i haven't seen my friends there in forever, and i'm excited to sleep in my own bed. i'm also looking forward to getting back into training. at this point i've had a few weeks off, and i'm itching to be working towards something again. i'm signed up for boston, but i also want to do a couple ultras this year. i'm kicking around the idea of joining a local ultrarunning club to meet people and learn the trails in the area.

last year had some really high highs and some not so fun lows in various aspects of life, and i'm glad to be moving forward. i'm excited for 2009 and all of the adventures that will be had. happy new years everyone!