Just Reminiscing

Ah the beauty of a perfect bluebird day of skiing. If you grew up in the southern part of the United State, you have to plan ski trips around a vacation. The ski area may be a days drive or a flight and then drive to the area. One must be prepared to ski every day at the mountain as you lose two days of vacation for travel and also be prepared for weather changes. I was fortunate enough to travel with groups by bus several times. So the party begins when you leave Dallas!

Newly single, in my early 30’s I joined a small racquet club in Dallas and played tennis at least three times a week…sometimes more. It was a wonderful mix of mostly professional people, nurses, fire fighters, police officers and others. Fun times at Court Five…there was a bar between four tennis courts. How convenient! Great ski trip were planned at this venue!

Never in a million years could I have anticipated the sheer bliss to come! When Mike and I married in 1982, we lived in Richardson, then Blue Ridge TX until 1989. We moved to San Jose CA with Mike’s new job. I had a new nursing position in an outpatient surgery center in the post anesthesia unit. New friends were easily made, especially one from Texas, Kevin Anne. As we grew closer, Mike and I were invited to join a group of friends who leased a ski condo at Lake Tahoe. No question we would do it! North Lake Tahoe was about a 5 hour drive from our townhouse! Well, as long as the highways were open! Occasionally there would be a back up at Applegate…where chains would be required unless you had snow tires or 4 wheel drive, which we always had! So from January 2 til the end of March, six other friends could stay in the condo for as longs as we wanted! 4 bedrooms , 2 baths, cable, fireplace, a dream come true and you could leave clothes and your ski equipment! Ahhh Brockway Springs! And actually winter is off season for the lake…who knew. SO many ski areas were near North Lake Tahoe! But the thing is you see…if you don’t want to ski all day or not at all, you’re there without worry regarding the weather, being very sore or tired…or finding other adventures at THE lake! Of course neither of the above happened very often! The condo, on the 9th floor overlooked the lake…early morning coffee sitting at the windows, getting ready for the slopes Sweet reminiscing.

While there were many wonderful bluebird days of skiing, Mike and I decided to try snowboarding (this was after I had the unhappy triad injury to my left knee!). Mike just hit the slopes, I wisely took lessons with other 12 year old boys who were about my size! The learning curve is much faster than skiing. We bought all the snowboard gear…board (Burton of course!), bindings, boots and gloves.

There were so many adventures during the years at the ski condo. While all were exceptional, one stands out as filled with laughter, giggles, falls in knee deep powder…without sight of another skier or rider. It was MLK weekend and the slopes at NorthStar (our fav) had been busy. We generally went to the top of the mountain where there the runs were blue and black diamond. Of course I preferred BLUE! A huge storm was predicted for Sunday and Monday. The majority of the guests left early afternoon on Sunday. Being the adventurers we were…Mike and I stayed. Our board buddy Jenny stayed with us since we were her ride LOL! The storm dropped about 2 feet of snow on Sunday night and continued through Monday, the actual holiday. We headed to NorthStar, strapped on our boards and headed downhill. The snow was so deep one could hardly keep the end of the board above the snow. OCCASIONALLY you could get up a little speed using shallow turns or straight down! We fell, we laughed, we rolled around in the deep snow trying to get upright, with our snow covered faces. Over and over all day we frolicked in the knee deep powder. No cares about the continuing snow fall, we were staying til Tuesday anyway! After a thigh burning, fun loving, exhausting day, we retired to our fav apres-ski eatery, Tres Amigos…where margaritas were $8/pitcher and nachos were free and unlimited! And just across the road from the condo, just ins case we needed to walk home 😉

Being married to Mike brought so many journeys and adventures I never dreamed could happen to me…a girl growing up in Oak Cliff. There are many more to share…later. Thank you Mike for teaching me to be flexible.