You Know You Live in a Ski Town When...

On Sunday I rented cross country skis for my little jaunt through the meadow, and on Monday morning I attempted to return them. The shop was closed.

Not the most flattering photo, but a nice view of the onsie.

I figured that the bro working the morning shift had probably just slept in, so I returned at noon to try again. Still not open.

Katie did awesome her first time ever cross country skiing!

Hmmm...I know they're supposed to be open today. But, if they're not, two days of skiing for the price of one! I gave them a call at 4:30...still no one there. So I g-chatted Katie, and we made plans: cross country skiing after work.

We headed to Camp Rich with just a couple of hours of daylight (don't worry, we packed our headlamps just in case) and set off along Lake Taco. Skiing along the lake is always gorgeous, but yesterday evening was the most beautiful I have ever seen it. Usually Lake Taco fades from aqua to dark blue, but last night, between the clouds and the sunset and the patches of blue sky, the lake was a soft blue with patches of gold.

It was gorgeous, and there were no other people around, and basically everything I love about cross country skiing wrapped up in one perfect day.

Poor quality cell phone pics still capture some of the beauty of the evening.

After two days of xc skiing, I am sore! My core is so tired that I kind of just want to flop on the floor of my office and work from there. My boss is gone today....

I called the rental place again this morning, and they were finally open. When I went to return the skis, this is the conversation I had.

Lynn: I tried to return these yesterday, but you guys weren't open.

Bro: Powder day, brah. I was shredding.

Ah, life in a ski town.

And I'll leave you with one more picture...Katie and I living the Tahoe Fabulous Lifestyle, in the Lakeland Village hot tub with a bottle of champagne from the Gross Out:

(Not pictured: 2 German dudes, one in a fuzzy Viking helmet that were also hot tub poaching that night.)

Living the dream

Yesterday, Katie and I were hanging out at the Brewery, and we met a girl who had gone to UCSB for undergrad and had a degree in environmental studies. She initially approached me to offer us their leftover pizza and compliment my onsie:

We got to talking, and she told me that I'm "living the perfect life."

I never really thought about how amazing that would be to hear. But it's pretty true. I mean, I wish Dan was closer, and that I had less student debt, and less boring hair, but, it's true. My life is pretty awesome.

Case in point- my weekend:

Saturday

I had planned to take my new (used) snowboard and my new (used) bindings out to Sierra on Saturday. Unfortunately, I was missing a part I needed to put them together, and woke up Saturday morning to snow and wind.

The weather plus the added expense of renting plus chain controls on Hwy 50 pretty much killed my desire to get up and drive to Sierra, so I crawled back into bed and caught up on some much needed sleep. I've already written about my adventures in snow running, but the planned run was a perfect was to enjoy the sunshine.

I ate about half a jar of peanut butter, drank a bunch of hot water with ginger, and went to sleep early.

Sunday

Since I'd missed out on a great day of snowboarding on Saturday, I was determined to get up and go on Sunday morning. Until I saw the weather...even harder snow and more wind. I decided to check two of my favorite websites noaa.gov and weather.com to see if it was going to clear up this afternoon. Definitely not, said the internet.

Oh, well. I decided just to enjoy my coffee, dig my car out of two feet of snow (Happy 1st day of Spring!) and maybe do some living room yoga. I sat on the floor, watching the snow fall, and drinking my coffee. A couple hours passed before I finally dragged myself up to shovel out my car. I noticed that Katie had texted me, to see if I wanted to go play outside/go cross country skiing. Absolutely!

I love going places you can only go on skis or snowshoes.

So we headed to Sierra Ski & Cycle Works, rented some xc skis and we were off to Camp Rich for some beautiful gliding along Lake Taco...Or not. Hwy 50 was bumper to bumper completely stopped for miles. There went the plan to go to Camp Rich. Luckily, my neighborhood is close to a meadow that's great for easy xc skiing, so we ditched off of 50 as soon as we could (which involved Katie asking the cars ahead of us to move over so we could escape on the shoulder!) and headed to Al Tahoe.

It was Katie's first time cross country skiing, so the trek through the neighborhood to the meadow was a perfect learning opportunity (plowed roads = groomed trails, almost). We made it to the meadow, and had a great time in basically solitude. After skiing, beers were drank, pizza was eaten, and hot tubs were poached (successfully!).

All in all, it was a pretty much perfect Tahoe weekend.

This is the face I'm making

Dan headed back to Santa Barbara, back to the land of sunshine, beaches, and really cheap avocados. I'm a little jealous. And kind of sore from skiing.

My workout routine usually gets kind of thrown off when I have visitors. I got a spin class and a twenty minute run and some weights in on Thursday before Dan got here, but Friday was a double whammy of laying around and imbibing a few beers with people visiting that I knew from grad school. Skiing was super fun, but I'm not sure how much of a cardio boost it was. Seriously. I skied sooooo sloooowly.

After we went skiing, we stopped at the Burger Lounge. If you are ever in South Lake Tahoe, go eat at this place! Amazing veggie burgers, and the omnivores present seemed to like there meat burgers. We also ordered an order of cheese fries to split. Holy cow, it was the most cheese I've ever seen on one dish. Piles and piles and piles of delicious melty cheddar goodness on hand cut fries. But I cannot overestimate the amount of cheese there was. We asked the cook and he told us "only 7 ounces." Seven ounces?! That's almost a half pound. We ate and ate, and it didn't even seem to make a dent in the amount left. Never ending cheese fries. I took them home and ate some later, and there were still about a bazillion cheese fries left. I finally admitted defeat and threw them away, where they took up half my garbage can.

I decided that instead of wallowing when Dan left, I would hit the gym for an endorphin boost (and possibly counteract some cheese fries). I ran for 30 minutes (my "long" run for the week), rode the stationary bike for 25 minutes, and did the elliptical for 25 minutes. I stretched for a long time (my hip flexors are really really sore from skiing) and did some planks.

I'm really glad that I started weight lifting again this winter. I haven't done it regularly for awhile, and I'm definitely getting stronger. While it's always nice seeing definition in my arms and legs, I absolutely love feeling stronger. I hadn't gone skiing in years, (and really only a few times ever) but it felt so much easier this time, and I really think that it's because my legs are so much stronger than the last time I went. I felt like I had so much more control over my legs and what they were doing. Hopefully, this will carry over into mountain biking next season. Which isn't coming until July.

Ugh.

I need to learn to love a winter sport.

Now that I live at Lake Taco, I should probably learn to ski.

One of my very favorite people came to visit me in Lake Taco. Please note his shifty eyes and physics nerd t-shirt.

It's very pretty here.

I recently moved from the beach:

To the mountains. There's a lot of snow in these mountains.

So, while I'd rather be doing this:

There is just too much snow. While I have a really special snow outfit, I don't exactly have any real snow sport skillz.

But I'm determined to learn. Note the helmet. Safety first. Even when you're just cruising down the green routes while tiny children zoom past you.

Now I'm going to cuddle on the couch, watch Dexter, and eat cookies.