After taking some time off from the road trip, visiting my Mom's side of the family in Michigan between Christmas and New Year's, it's off again, this time to South Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is just south of Reno, Nevada on the California/Nevada border. The plan was to stay at the base of Heavenly Ski Resort at Embassy Suites for a 5 day snowboarding trip. Rachel goes every year with a family friend of ours, the Gurleys. They invite me every year, and have never been able to go, but since I only travel these days, let's do it. On board for the trip- Rachel and I, Rachel's good friend Whitney, her brother Wesley, their dad Allen Gurley, and his friend Steve Ward.
Allen and Steve did all the planning for the trip and then sent Rachel and I the details. First up- a 6 am flight from Charlotte to Dallas and then Dallas to Reno, Nevada. Well, you have to arrive about an hour and half early for a flight, it's at least an hour and 15 minute drive from my house to Charlotte, so that puts our departure time at approximately 3 am. I am sometimes still awake then, so screw it, I'm not sleeping. The flight was very uneventful, and I managed to catch a good amount of sleep on both flights, at least enough to make it until the next night to get on Pacific time.
If you have been on a ski trip before you know how things usually go. In my mind, 4 things happen on ski trips
1. Skiing/ Snowboarding/ whatever else you can ride down a ski mountain. Rachel and I were snowboarding, while the other 4 were skiing.
2. Drinking. Yea, this usually happens on a ski trip.
3. Eating.
4. Sleeping.
Oh, yea, and if the ski mountain you go to happens to be in Nevada then….
5. Gambling
Or, if you're Rachel and Whitney
6. Find the computer room at the hotel and make sure you haven't missed anything on Facebook.
If the first 4 weren't enough for a ski trip, throw in the fact that there was a computer room at the hotel and a casino about 50 yards away. Everyone's happy.
The week before the trip, I was told that Lake Tahoe had received a total of 1 inch of snow this season, compared to the usual 50 inches they normally get by this time of year. We weren't even sure how good the skiing would be for the week, but we already had everything planned and paid for. This was my first year on the trip, so naturally, the newbie received all the blame for Lake Tahoe receiving one inch of snow this season.
We went to the most well known mountain of Lake Tahoe, Heavenly Ski Resort (Pretty cool name if you ask me) to find out, hey, wait a minute, this man-made snow isn't half bad. All the locals were cursing the snow gods, but us North Carolinians weren't complaining at all. The best we have are two 1 mile runs of all man-made snow in Western North Carolina, while Heavenly is a huge mountain with probably 20 different runs and 10 chair lifts. Usually you can just go all through the trees and off trail, but since it was all man-made and no natural snow, the trails were confined to what the snow blowers could cover.
Each morning we bought the back-breaking $92 lift tickets and took the enclosed gondola from the bottom of the village to the bottom of the ski mountain. You could put your ticket in your pocket and the people working on the mountain could scan your ticket through your clothes. I don't know how the hell this is possible, but I guess when you charge almost 100 bucks for a lift ticket and 15 bucks for a sandwich, you can afford stuff like this.
After the gondola ride to the bottom of the mountain, there were multiple chairlifts taking you wherever you wanted to go on the mountain. Once you took the chairlifts to the top of the mountain, you would get off the lift with stunning views of Lake Tahoe and the surrounding mountains. I ended up taking the same picture about 20 times throughout the week, but each time up the mountain, I couldn't believe that the view was that amazing.
After about 2 runs down the mountain, you can pretty much figure out how people operate on a ski mountain. When I go snowboarding with my Marion friends, we all ride together, stop 3 times to wait on everyone on a 1 mile run, throw snowballs at each other going down the mountain, and point and laugh at anyone who wipes out. The Gurleys, on the other hand, race down the mountain as fast as they can, get on the chairlift as quickly as possible, and are halfway up the mountain before Rachel and I make it down. But hey, we're on a ski mountain, who cares right.
By 1 o'clock the first day of snowboarding, I decided that I wore too many layers, and had my toboggan and my gloves off because I was so hot. At one point, I even resorted to putting snow in my pants in a last ditch effort to cool down. I'm used to freezing my ass off on a ski mountain, not sweating profusely in the snow. It had also been about 6 years since I had been on a mountain comparable in size to Heavenly, so I was just living the dream out there, sweating or not.
Part of Heavenly is in Nevada, while a few runs are in California. We decided that we would make our way over to the California side in the afternoon on day 1, and come back to the Nevada side later in the afternoon to catch the Gondola down the mountain before it closed at 4 pm. Well, because Lake Tahoe had no natural snow, the pass to get back to the Nevada side was closed. We didn't quite figure this out until we were already on the California side, resulting in a 20 minute bus ride back over to our hotel. It was Allen's idea to go over to the California side of the mountain, so he caught hell the rest of the night for it.
So far in my gambling career, blackjack has been my game. Well, Steve introduced me to Texas Hold 'Em at these so called casinos. Most of you know how to play Hold 'Em. Everyone playing is dealt two cards face down, and 5 community cards are dealt face up for everyone to see and use. Betting occurs in 4 separate rounds and at the end, whoever has the best 5 card hand, (Using the 5 community cards and the 2 in your hand) wins all the money in the pot.
I decided to give a tournament a try for the first time. I entered the Tuesday tournament, learning on the fly how to play legit casino Hold 'Em, and ended up finishing 6th out of 26th people, just short of making money. Only the top 3 get paid in tournaments with less than 30 people, so I played just long enough to think I had a chance, but not long enough to actually make some money.
Later that night, during an awful round of blackjack, Allen, Wesley and I figured out a way to decide if you have met the right woman. Referring to blackjack….. "Would you hit on 18." The answers
A) What do you mean do I hit on 18? This is by all means an incorrect answer.
B) Yes, I would hit on 18. This is also an incorrect answer.
C) No, I would stay on 18. This is a correct response, but not the best response.
D) Is it a soft 18, and what does the dealer have? I honestly wouldn't know what to do if someone said this to me. If I were in Vegas, I might have a wife.
We knocked out a second day of skiing, dropping a few layers of clothes to avoid a heatstroke and avoiding the California side of the mountain. With a tournament under my belt, I was ready to give Texas Hold 'Em another shot. This time, I managed to finish 3rd out of 28 people who entered the tournament. I made the money this time, and came a hand or two away from actually winning the tournament. Wait a minute, I have been playing blackjack all this time, with roughly a 45% chance of winning each hand. This really doesn't make any sense at all.
On Thursday, we took a day off from skiing to drive around Lake Tahoe. It was about 75 miles around the whole lake, and we decided to take the whole day to check out, assuming we made back by 4:30 for happy hour. Since there was no snow anywhere, we were able to drive on some back roads to get to a waterfall and a pond nearby. The pond was frozen, so why not walk out on to it? Ok, you go first. Nah, you go first and then I'll go. Let me throw something heavy on there to see if it will break. The 4 guys all ended up out there, well until we heard the cracking noise that you never want to hear when standing on ice.
After stopping at a couple good overlooks, we climbed on a few rocks jutting out into the lake at one of the public access areas. After doing so, we began testing Whitney's new iPhone out. She has the 4S, with Siri. Siri is the iPhone friend who you can tell stuff to do and somehow your phone just does it. You can ask her what the weather will be for a certain area and get an answer. You can ask her random questions and somehow she finds out the answers. Someone recently was explaining to me what amazing things Siri could do. They said, "With Siri, you can send a text message by just saying the message out loud. She converts your verbal message into a text message and sends that to another person. The other person (assuming they have an iPhone) can then have that text message read aloud to them and can respond by having their verbal message converted to a text message." Wait a minute, you know what that kind of sounds like? Talking on the phone.
Since I did so well in the tournaments, I decided to give the cash game a try. (Well, the Duke game wasn't finished before the poker tournament started on Thursday night, so the cash game was the best available option.) I sit down with the minimum buy-in at a 2 and 3 dollar blind table. There were guys at the table slinging big bucks around, so I was patient, waited on good hands, and picked my spots. Fast forward to about 2 hours later, and I had 6 times the amount of money I started with. This would have been fantastic and all, if I had left out the fact that blackjack was not so kind to me the first 3 nights.
The last day on the mountain was the coldest, and the Gurleys and I found a jump to hit while Rachel and Steve videotaped. I recall this as being the only time during the trip that someone other than a Wheeler crashed on the slopes. We all made it out in one piece for the week, caught happy hour on Friday night and then attempted to pay for the entire trip at the casino. I set off to win thousands of dollars playing Texas Hold 'Em, because, you know, I made money in one tournament AND made a little money playing in a cash game a day earlier, I mean I'm almost a professional. I might have gotten a little ahead of myself, not played as smart as the night before, made a few bad calls and didn't catch any cards, because damn, I lost that money fast. Words of advice from someone who shouldn't be giving advice…… never think you have anything figured out.
We caught the flight back to Charlotte the next morning and arrived home at about 10 pm on Saturday night. Hopefully everyone thought I was a good addition to the group, and who knows, maybe I get an invite next year.
RIP JHW 3
Great pictures! Love em!
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