A Week at Alpine

Ski Buddies
[click on any photo for a larger version]
President’s Day marked the first day of Karsyn’s winter break from school (not to be confused with Christmas or spring break), so we rented a cabin up in Tahoe City with our friend’s Steve and Tracy. It was a great week of skiing, lounging and playing with the kids.

Karsyn continues to become a better skier every time we hit the slopes. We rented skis for her down in the Bay Area for this trip, so she was able to get in a couple of solid days of skiing. We hit Alpine Meadows and their tow bar lift to start day one. It took Karsyn a couple of tries to get the hang of the tow bar.

For those that are unfamiliar, the tow bar is an aluminum pole that’s attached to a cable that tows beginner skiers up the hill. The pole has a plastic disk attached to the end of it, so the skier slips the pole between their legs and uses the disk as a make shift seat.


Conquering the Ski Lift
Karsyn didn’t quite get the concept of letting go of the pole after falling on her first attempt to tow up the hill. I give her a lot of credit for holding onto that thing for as long as she did! I’m just glad I caught the pole behind her, because the pole itself is attached to the main cable with an elastic band. Once she finally did let go of the pole, the elastic was stretched to the max, so it rocketed forward.

She finally made it up the hill, but I figured that the whole tow bar thing was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, she would have to learn to get on and off a regular ski lift sooner or later. This was as good a time as any!

The funny thing is that it was actually easier for her to use the ski lift. She boarded the thing as if she’d been doing it her whole life. No problem at all.

Sonya and I traded off skiing the two days that we got to spend at Alpine, half the time skiing with Karsyn and the other half free to enjoy the more advanced runs by ourselves.


Too Cool!
Tahoe City is quaint little town nestled off highway 89, right on the shores of the lake. There are a few nice little restaurants along the main strip of town. We were trying to figure out where to have dinner on the third night, and were standing on the sidewalk when along came a short bearded man in a green velvet fedora and a camouflaged hunting sweater. I recognized that it was Robin Williams, who we had heard spends part of the Winter skiing at Alpine.

I excused myself and asked him if he knew of any good Mexican restaurants in town. We really were looking for a Mexican joint, and was going to ask the next bystander that walked by anyway, this one just happened to be an Academy Award winner (1997 Best Supporting Actor – Good Will Hunting).

He was very cordial and suggested a place down the street. I didn’t let on that I knew who he was, trying to respect his privacy to some degree. I suppose he has to deal with annoying people all the time. After assisting me with my query, he scampered across the street, jumped in an SUV and drove off.


Ski Bunnies
The restaurant turned out to be the Blue Agave, a cantina that we thought was affiliated with the restaurant of the same name in Pleasanton that we dined at a few months ago with our friends Scott and Christine (I later found out that it wasn't). We decided to skip the Agave thinking it was a higher end restaurant (not conducive to children) and ate at Rosie’s Café.

On our final day of the vacation, we took the kids to a sledding hill so they could blow off some steam before the 4 hour drive back to the Bay Area. I started to trek down to the bottom of the hill where I could video tape some of the action, but before I could make it all the way, Karsyn and Matthew came screaming by me in a plastic sled. Problem is, they couldn’t stop the sled. They did however get to experience Newton’s first law firsthand

“… an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

The unbalanced force in this case, was a rock hard snow man at the bottom of the hill. “Abrupt” would be a good word to describe the fashion in which the sled came to rest. “Spontaneous” would be a good adjective to slap onto the description of the crying that ensued.


After "kissing" the snowman
Aside from a couple of bumps, both kids were fine. It’s reminiscent of the old Wide World of Sports show’s “agony of defeat” intro. Ouch.

For more photos of our trip, [click here]