1) I got into a car accident almost three weeks ago. I was just driving down the street and some girl smashes into the side of me. I think she was changing lanes and didn't see me there. So now my somewha
t new car looks very sad on the side. The passenger side door has most of the damage - it will definitely cost more than $1000 to repair. She completely admitted fault. We pulled over onto a business driveway on the side of the road. This guy came out of the building and asked if we were alright and after seeing that we weren't physically hurt he told us it was private property and we needed to leave. lol. Thanks a lot man. We drove down the street to a neighborhood and saw a city sheriff. We flagged him down and he informed us we needed to call California Highway Patrol. CHP came out and the guy informed us that San Jose Police were supposed to take care of the situation. So basically no one felt like helping us out - so annoying. The only way we could get real help is if one of us had been hurt. Great. We eventually traded insurance information. I'm currently in the process of getting the insurance and repairs settled. I'm surprised the airbag didn't go off because she knocked into me pretty hard. I'm just thankful that no one got hurt - even if it would have gotten us better service from the police.2) Tickets to Atlanta were so expensive for the holidays that Jeff and I decided to stick around here. Our first holiday without family - kind of sad...but we made the best out of it. We took a trip to Lake Tahoe and learned how to snowboard. It was so awesome!! :) We went with our friends, Josh and Soni, and their dog, Luna. Luna is a year old and she had never been in snow before. She was so adorable! :) We got our snowboard training Christmas day and then decided to practice a little more a few days later. Below is Jeff's recount of our time there.
(picture below: the four of us celebr
ating on Christmas Eve.)Tahoe Trip Report (12/24/2008 - 12/28/2008)
Our trip started at about noon on Christmas Eve. Josh and Soni picked me up and we packed the car, grabbed a few sandwiches and water for the road, and then picked up Laura from Bath & Body Works. There was a lot of traffic at first, but not too bad. Once we got to Kyburz, we found out there was a chain restriction, as the roads were a bit icy, so we pulled over and Josh put the chains on in the last moments before nightfall. As the snow started to pick up a bit we continued the long journey at 15-20 mph and I was given plenty examples of how NOT to drive on snow and ice from several other drivers. We finally arrived at Three Peaks after 6 and half hours. We unpacked and stretched our legs before heading to Harrah's to get a Christmas Eve dinner at Friday's Station Steak & Seafood Grill. Maybe it was because it was my first real meal since having my wisdom teeth removed, but that was one of the best meals of my life. The food was excellent, we enjoyed two bottles of wine, some tasty desserts, a great view, and excellent service. We explored the casino and did a little bit of gambling before retiring back to the hotel to get a full night sleep before hitting the slopes the next day!
After getting up and donning our snow gear, we walked to the gondola area to catch the free shuttle to Heavenly California Lodge. We looked into large group lessons, but opted for lessons with a private instructor ($50 more per person, but HIGHLY recommended). We geared up and went to the bunny hill. After learning the basics of snow boarding, we started going up the "carpet" that took us to the top of a hill that descended about 10 feet :). We practiced turning a few times down and before we knew it we decided to take a break for lunch. After lunch, we decided to take on our first run (green of course). A major benefit of being in a class is that you don't have to wait in line at lifts. So we took our first lift up to the top of "First Ride" and were treated to some nice views of the Lake. Upon getting off the lift, Laura fell on her face and had to quickly scramble out of the way to avoid me running into her when Josh and I got off the lift, and I am proud to say that neither he nor myself fell :). We got a quick lesson on heel sliding and then attempted to do it going down the run. Definitely did not succeed the first few times down and I quickly learned that the most difficult part of snowboarding is getting up, or at least learning to. So every time that I fell, I had to wait for the instructor to come and help me up. We kept doing the same run the rest of the day and on my last time down, I was finally able to go down without any help from the instructor, even if I couldn't get up alone all the time! I passed my final (well, sort of) :-P. After relaxing and taking a quick nap, we decided to head to Montbleu to try del Soul. A pitcher of margaritas and some excellent food later, we decided to hit the tables. I introduced Josh to Let It Ride to get him off of his Blackjack fix. While watching me and deciding whether or not to play, I looked at my hand and uncovered 777 (my second time ever getting trips underneath). That was all Josh had to see before sitting down. Perhaps more amazingly then me getting 777 was that about five hands in, Josh looks down and notices he has 666. So apparently I am lucky and he is the devil? I then went and played some Pai Gow and found out that Josh missed a royal flush by 1 card, which would have been a nice payout in the tens of thousands, oh well. After downing some free drinks, we passed out at the hotel.
We woke up the next day sore as all get out, so decided to take the day off and site see and give Luna some entertainment as well. We had lunch at Womack's, which has some of the tenderest baby backs I've ever had. I highly recommend it, it is right near Park Avenue on Highway 50. We walked around for a while taking pictures and exploring Heavenly Village. I stopped off at a Rocky Mountain to see how their store looked and try their avalanche bark. We then walked down to Lake Tahoe and took a lot more pictures. While running up the packed snow packed along the side of the road and kept running, and I quickly learned that trying to run across untouched, unpacked, fresh snow results in sinking, as I found myself waist deep and quite cold. We went back to the hotel and took another nap. After waking up, I suggested we go to the Hard Rock Cafe at Harveys Casino because it catered to a younger crowd and has the biggest gambling floor of all the stateline casinos. It turned out to be a HUGE mistake. We got there around 7 and played some table games while waiting for our table to be ready. We were sat at about 8 and didn't get our drink order taken until 8:20. Our appetizer came out and we asked for small plates, so we could share it, but we did not get them for more than 10 minutes, at which point it was just about cold. At about 9:15, we noticed that 3 tables of 6 that our waitress was waiting on had ordered, gotten their food, eaten it, gotten their bill, paid, and either left or were leaving, while we had not gotten our entrees. Josh got up and talked to a manager to try and see what the hold up was. He came back in less than 1 minute with our food and apologized for the delay and said that he would like to pay for our meal. While eating it was very apparent that our food was sitting out in the kitchen for a long time under a heat lamp and tasted awful. As it was clearly the waitresses fault, we decided to leave 0 tip (first time ever). As we were walking out of the restaurant on the casino floor we hear someone yelling and turn around to see the waitress running after us. She catches up and starts yelling at us trying to say that nothing was her fault and she deserved a tip. She yelled that we "got everything we wanted by complaining and got our whole meal free". After pushing us harder, Josh finally decided to say something to her. He very firmly explained to her exactly why she was at fault and why she received no tip (for anyone who has seen Josh animated before, knows he can get a bit loud :-P). She stormed off, but not before calling us all assholes. It was about this time that we realized that we were standing in the middle of the casino floor of a holiday weekend and the casino was packed, with those nearby staring at us. It was definitely humiliating to say the least. So we promptly walked past the tables to the cashier and cashed out our chips and left the casino to go back to the hotel and relax.
When we got up the next day, Josh, Laura, and I went to the slopes (Soni was too sore to go). After getting to Heavenly right as they opened we thought we had bad karma from the night before because things kept going awry, including waiting for more than 30 minutes for maintenance to fix the lockers. We got lucky though in that the lines were still very short. We went up for our first run and while Josh seemed to do fine, I kept falling and just could not get up by myself. After wearing myself out and having trouble breathing I had to take a break. After Laura told me that a photographer was taking pictures on the run, I decided that I was ready to go out there and try it again. I still couldn't get up by myself, but Josh slowed things down for himself and helped me up. After going down a few more times and watching Josh and others get up I suddenly was able to get up by myself. After that, it got much easier and my last run of the day I successfully went down the whole run without falling once for the first time. :) After getting some pictures printed out, we met Soni at the gondolas and took a ride up to the top of the mountain a few thousand more feet and were treated to some amazing views of the valley and everything surrounding it. After some more pictures we headed to Steak and Brew right when lunch and dinner were both closed. So we were stuck with beer and some amazing pizza (poor us!). I was sure to leave 40% to make up for the horrible waitress we had the previous night. We were all sore and exhausted, so we took another nap and then headed to Harrah's again for some more gambling. None of us had much luck that night, but we did have a lot of fun. We were so tired that we made it a relatively early night.
The next morning, we got up early and left at 8:30 in the morning (after taking the chains off - yay). We were able to beat most of the traffic out of Tahoe and made it back in just over 4 hours. Perfect timing to drop our bags off and head to a sports bar to enjoy some sliders and watch the Dolphins kick some Jets ass on their way to the playoffs!! A perfect ending to a wonderful trip!
After getting up and donning our snow gear, we walked to the gondola area to catch the free shuttle to Heavenly California Lodge. We looked into large group lessons, but opted for lessons with a private instructor ($50 more per person, but HIGHLY recommended). We geared up and went to the bunny hill. After learning the basics of snow boarding, we started going up the "carpet" that took us to the top of a hill that descended about 10 feet :). We practiced turning a few times down and before we knew it we decided to take a break for lunch. After lunch, we decided to take on our first run (green of course). A major benefit of being in a class is that you don't have to wait in line at lifts. So we took our first lift up to the top of "First Ride" and were treated to some nice views of the Lake. Upon getting off the lift, Laura fell on her face and had to quickly scramble out of the way to avoid me running into her when Josh and I got off the lift, and I am proud to say that neither he nor myself fell :). We got a quick lesson on heel sliding and then attempted to do it going down the run. Definitely did not succeed the first few times down and I quickly learned that the most difficult part of snowboarding is getting up, or at least learning to. So every time that I fell, I had to wait for the instructor to come and help me up. We kept doing the same run the rest of the day and on my last time down, I was finally able to go down without any help from the instructor, even if I couldn't get up alone all the time! I passed my final (well, sort of) :-P. After relaxing and taking a quick nap, we decided to head to Montbleu to try del Soul. A pitcher of margaritas and some excellent food later, we decided to hit the tables. I introduced Josh to Let It Ride to get him off of his Blackjack fix. While watching me and deciding whether or not to play, I looked at my hand and uncovered 777 (my second time ever getting trips underneath). That was all Josh had to see before sitting down. Perhaps more amazingly then me getting 777 was that about five hands in, Josh looks down and notices he has 666. So apparently I am lucky and he is the devil? I then went and played some Pai Gow and found out that Josh missed a royal flush by 1 card, which would have been a nice payout in the tens of thousands, oh well. After downing some free drinks, we passed out at the hotel.
We woke up the next day sore as all get out, so decided to take the day off and site see and give Luna some entertainment as well. We had lunch at Womack's, which has some of the tenderest baby backs I've ever had. I highly recommend it, it is right near Park Avenue on Highway 50. We walked around for a while taking pictures and exploring Heavenly Village. I stopped off at a Rocky Mountain to see how their store looked and try their avalanche bark. We then walked down to Lake Tahoe and took a lot more pictures. While running up the packed snow packed along the side of the road and kept running, and I quickly learned that trying to run across untouched, unpacked, fresh snow results in sinking, as I found myself waist deep and quite cold. We went back to the hotel and took another nap. After waking up, I suggested we go to the Hard Rock Cafe at Harveys Casino because it catered to a younger crowd and has the biggest gambling floor of all the stateline casinos. It turned out to be a HUGE mistake. We got there around 7 and played some table games while waiting for our table to be ready. We were sat at about 8 and didn't get our drink order taken until 8:20. Our appetizer came out and we asked for small plates, so we could share it, but we did not get them for more than 10 minutes, at which point it was just about cold. At about 9:15, we noticed that 3 tables of 6 that our waitress was waiting on had ordered, gotten their food, eaten it, gotten their bill, paid, and either left or were leaving, while we had not gotten our entrees. Josh got up and talked to a manager to try and see what the hold up was. He came back in less than 1 minute with our food and apologized for the delay and said that he would like to pay for our meal. While eating it was very apparent that our food was sitting out in the kitchen for a long time under a heat lamp and tasted awful. As it was clearly the waitresses fault, we decided to leave 0 tip (first time ever). As we were walking out of the restaurant on the casino floor we hear someone yelling and turn around to see the waitress running after us. She catches up and starts yelling at us trying to say that nothing was her fault and she deserved a tip. She yelled that we "got everything we wanted by complaining and got our whole meal free". After pushing us harder, Josh finally decided to say something to her. He very firmly explained to her exactly why she was at fault and why she received no tip (for anyone who has seen Josh animated before, knows he can get a bit loud :-P). She stormed off, but not before calling us all assholes. It was about this time that we realized that we were standing in the middle of the casino floor of a holiday weekend and the casino was packed, with those nearby staring at us. It was definitely humiliating to say the least. So we promptly walked past the tables to the cashier and cashed out our chips and left the casino to go back to the hotel and relax.
When we got up the next day, Josh, Laura, and I went to the slopes (Soni was too sore to go). After getting to Heavenly right as they opened we thought we had bad karma from the night before because things kept going awry, including waiting for more than 30 minutes for maintenance to fix the lockers. We got lucky though in that the lines were still very short. We went up for our first run and while Josh seemed to do fine, I kept falling and just could not get up by myself. After wearing myself out and having trouble breathing I had to take a break. After Laura told me that a photographer was taking pictures on the run, I decided that I was ready to go out there and try it again. I still couldn't get up by myself, but Josh slowed things down for himself and helped me up. After going down a few more times and watching Josh and others get up I suddenly was able to get up by myself. After that, it got much easier and my last run of the day I successfully went down the whole run without falling once for the first time. :) After getting some pictures printed out, we met Soni at the gondolas and took a ride up to the top of the mountain a few thousand more feet and were treated to some amazing views of the valley and everything surrounding it. After some more pictures we headed to Steak and Brew right when lunch and dinner were both closed. So we were stuck with beer and some amazing pizza (poor us!). I was sure to leave 40% to make up for the horrible waitress we had the previous night. We were all sore and exhausted, so we took another nap and then headed to Harrah's again for some more gambling. None of us had much luck that night, but we did have a lot of fun. We were so tired that we made it a relatively early night.
The next morning, we got up early and left at 8:30 in the morning (after taking the chains off - yay). We were able to beat most of the traffic out of Tahoe and made it back in just over 4 hours. Perfect timing to drop our bags off and head to a sports bar to enjoy some sliders and watch the Dolphins kick some Jets ass on their way to the playoffs!! A perfect ending to a wonderful trip!
We also had a great New Years Eve. We reserved a VIP table at ViViD Nightclub. It was fun and I was glad we did something special for the new year. We went with Josh, Soni, and Venkat. We hope everyone else had a great holiday season! :) I will be sure to update this every once in a while. Meanwhile, enjoy the pics :)
much love,
~Laura
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