Life update

In bullet form!

• I moved again. For the third time in the year that I've lived in Tahoe. It was a serious upgrade this time, (and only $15 rent increase!) so hopefully it's the last time for awhile. Our new place is beautiful, furnished, has cable (!), has a garage, and we have the most adorable landlords of all time. They had cake and champagne for us when we signed the lease, and they picked us because we remind them of their daughters. I now have two awesome roommates instead of just one:

Allison

Katie

• I think I am going to do this triathlon. It's an off road tri, and I won't have ridden a mountain bike since October, but it sounds like lots of fun. Maybe it will be a reason to start snow biking to get some off road practice in. I started "officially training" for it this week so get ready for training updates. Woo hoo!
• A couple of my friends are moving to Boulder at the end of November, so I'm thinking of doing a summer road trip out to visit them and doing Iron Girl Boulder. I know Heather has done it. What do you think?
• My HLP came to Tahoe with her boyfriend and an array of friends for his Dirty Thirty (is this a thing?) party. We had a great time, drank a lot of champagne, and took many, many HLP pictures.

We're the same height!

Because I'm standing in a hole.

Fake teeter totter.

Big chair

• Snow is coming in this weekend and it's opening weekend at Heavenly (where I have my pass this season). Unfortunately, It's only going to be about an inch, so I'm probably going to avoid opening weekend crowds and focus on moving/un-packing/pre-Thanksgiving potlucking this weekend. But when I get back from Seattle after Thanksgiving weekend, there had better be a big ass snowstorm.

Sooooo tired

My whole body is exhausted.

Dan and a couple of other friends came up this weekend and we enjoyed the feet upon feet of snow at Northstar and Kirkwood.

Powder snowboarding is hard. My right knee and calf muscle hurt. My left elbow hurts. My shoulders are sore. My quads are sore. Everything is sore.

But it was so much fun.

I'll write a longer post when I'm not about to fall asleep into my Bitch Creek.

My life is based around one thing...

Snow.

I guess that's what I get for moving to 6,500 feet.

In honor of the snow that is still falling from the sky, here are some pictures from last weekend's snowboarding trip:

Carving down the mountain, like the bad ass I am.

My mittens are huge and my goggles have skulls on them, but hey, they were on sale.

We were skiing/riding Heavenly that day. If you look closely at the background, you'll notice that it's the desert. Nothing like being on a snow-covered mountain, looking down, and seeing the desert.

Dan and Carl have awkward roommate bonding time.

Dan is very safety-conscious with his full-face helmet and body armor. He is also kind of creepy.

Free Guinness Earmuffs!

I got off work a little early yesterday, so I got to hit the gym a little early and watch UCSB get pummeled from the elliptical before spin class. I ended up doing 45 minutes on the elliptical and then 90 minutes of spinning.

I was super hungry by the time I left the gym, but instead of eating like a responsible human, I instead picked up Katie and we headed to MacDuff's for some St. Patrick's Day fun.

I hadn't gone out for St. Patrick's Day in a couple of years. Not since I'd been in B-ham with these crazies:

We must have had some pretty awesome parking karma, because we got a spot right away. It was packed inside, so we had a beer while we waited for a table to open up.

Pint of strong beer + no dinner + more than 2 hours of cardio = that one beer hit me pretty hard.

Luckily, we were finally able to flag down a waiter and order some food. I had some delicious veggie pizza, french fries, and more beer. Some of Katie's coworkers, and our intern Carissa showed up, and a good time was had by all. And more beer was had. Of course, in honor of the holiday, we also had Irish Car Bombs. And I got free Guinness earmuffs!

I had a lovely (if cold) walk back to my car in MacDuff's parking lot this morning. Luckily for my flat-clad feet, it didn't start snowing until about 2 pm this afternoon. It's snowed a good couple of inches already.

In exciting, snow-related news- my snowboard came! I now have a board and bindings, I just need boots and to put all of them together. Last weekend's snowboarding outing was pretty frustrating by day two. Learning something new is so hard! I might pay to take a lesson this weekend.

My knees were really bugging me this weekend, and I think that I just have to admit that my knees can't handle half marathon training right now. Goodbye, American River Half. I think that part of the problem is that my running is pretty much exclusively on the treadmill right now. Maybe I'll try again this summer when I can run on a more forgiving surface, like trails or the beach.

So I'm going to stick with the more manageable distances in tri-training, snowboarding, and dreaming about bike season.

Expensive dreaming.

New things!

New hobbies are expensive.

Backcountry.com is having Semi-Annual Sale with Free 2-day shipping right now, and today is the last day.

I definitely bought a coat, goggles, and mittens for snowboarding. Well, the coat is partly for fashion because I have a serviceable shell, but it's ugly and doesn't match my pants. It's also a little short.

G-chat conversation with Katie today:

Lynn: I may have bought a coat, goggles, and mittens today.

Katie: You are turning into a snowboarder!

Lynn: Yeah, brah. Toasty.

I think that I'm going to buy a mid-season pass at Sierra-at-Tahoe. I'd prefer Heavenly, but they don't offer mid-season pricing, and I am definitely not paying $800 for only half a season.

Now I just need a board, boots, and bindings. And maybe a butt pad.

Perfect Tahoe Weekend?

If you look up blue bird powder day in the dictionary, there would be a picture of yesterday in Lake Taco.

We got more than two feet of snow in 24 hours, between Thursday night and Friday night, and woke up to perfect blue skies yesterday morning. That meant only one thing, snowboarding lesson #2.

My wonderful friend Katie and I put on all of our snow gear, got coffee and bagels, and headed to the California base of Heavenly, about 3 miles from my house. After a run down a green slope with me, Katie headed off to do some runs with better powder that were a little more challenging. I kept practicing on the easier slope, but after 7 or 8 runs (and one extremely embarrassing fall getting off the lift), I felt ready to move up!

I found Katie, and she took me on some blue runs. I'm really excited about how quickly I'm picking up snowboarding. Though I've been skiing more times, I never got very confident on skis. I never got confident enough for skiing to be fun. With snowboarding, I feel confident in my ability to slow down or stop, so I feel confident enough to go fast. And going fast is fun. Also, how can you not have fun riding somewhere that looks like this?

From here.

I've got riding on my back edge down, now I'm working on using my toe edge. It's a little scary, because at one point in the turn, you're sliding backwards down the hill. It's hard to get used to the feeling and trust that you'll swing around, but I'm getting better. I definitely have fewer bruises, bumps, scrapes, and sore muscles than the last time I went out.

Apres ski (apres snowboard?), Katie and I went to MacDuffs Pub which just opened in Lake Taco in December. There's another one in Connecticut. I hadn't been there yet, but I've been hearing about how good it was, as our intern's boyfriend and some of his friends own it. It's awesome! Great food, good happy hour specials ($3 beer pints! Of good beer!), friendly staff, and, best of all, a tiny rottweiler puppy named Bob.

Full of cheese, garlic, and beer, I took a nap so I could have enough energy for the concert I was going to, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Katie, Carin, and I got to the show late (Like an hour late. Ooops.), and it was sold out. While we stood around and debated what we should do instead, the will call office told everyone waiting around that they would sell the unclaimed will call tickets for half off. Sweet! Half the show, for half the price. The band put on a great show, and there was so many beards and so much plaid. I was in heaven!

All in all, it was a pretty perfect Saturday, but it definitely drained me, and I have yet to work up the energy to do the 5 mile run I'm supposed to do today. I did go grocery shopping at my favorite place (though I did have to go to Safeway also because the Gross Out didn't have spinach. I need spinach!) and broke out my Valentine's Day present for the first time to make a delicious smoothie.

My (strange, but) delicious smoothie ingredients:

- Frozen strawberries

- Chocolate chai rice milk (This was on Gross Out special, so I was a little worried that it was going to be disgusting, but I decided to risk it for 99 cents.)

- Banana

- Spinach

- Peanut butter

I drank my wonderful beverage while catching up with my HLP and staring at Lake Taco.

Later I'm going to make a huge salad, do my taxes, and consolidate my loans, so this weekend is only getting better!