Sierra Nevada's

January 31, 2009
Sierra Nevada’s!

IF YOU CLICK PICTURES THEY GET BIGGER! picture in bar is Christina, Me, Grayson, and my roommate Leah. Picture on Mountain is Me, Grayson, and Christina.

Since we don’t have Friday classes (ever!) my friends and I decided to plan a ski/snowboard trip to the mountains. The Sierra Nevada’s are only about a 30 minute bus ride away from where we live, so it’s super easy. We had to get up at 6:15 in the morning to be able to catch the first bus at 7 am that would take us to the big charter bus station where the first bus of the day left at 8 am. Since I didn’t go to bed until about 2:30, this was a pretty obscene time to have to get up and get ready. I chose to wear 3 pairs of leggings, a pair of sweat pants, and then rent ski bibs at the ski rental place. My leg’s looked REAL huge, Grayson described them as “sausages” (at least she is honest). We all chose to rent our ski’s at the station because we were told they were cheaper than renting at the mountain (which Molly found out the hard way was true, her story will come later.) For skis, boots, poles, and pants, it was only 15 euro- BOMB price. Grayson and Christina snowboarded; Molly, Leah, and I skiied. I really wanted to snowboard, but we unanimously decided that this was neither the time nor the place to try to learn.

We arrived around 8:45 and bought our lift tickets. Thank god we took the first bus because around 9;30 the lines for the lift tickets were so long and probably about a 45 minute wait. As my dad always says, 1 minute will cost you 10. This is probably the first time I have been happy to have known that saying of his. After getting all of our stuff together and some of us buying hats/gloves/etc we were ready to hit the slopes, until we realized we needed lockers. The search for these was unreal. Probably 30 to 45 minutes later we had found them, and then realized Leah and Molly were nowhere in sight.


Now for Molly’s story.

Molly had rented skis with the rest of us, and put her ski’s with the rest of ours when we had gone on a hunt for lockers. When she had gone to pick hers up, they were missing. She went on a search and realized they had either been lost or stolen. Molly comes to ask us if we have them, but as she is walking she trips and wipes out on ice. As she would explain later, she told Leah that if she said anything about this she was “just going to freak out”, I can only imagine. She then went and asked the police and she had to file a POLICE REPORT at 10 am after some jackass stole her skis (but very nicely, left her poles). So she is alone, in a foreign police station, trying to use her Spanish to communicate what has happened. Keep in mind, she RENTED these ski’s and now has to worry about paying for them once we get back to the bus station. She gets the report finished and goes into a ski shop on the mountain to rent a second pair of skis. She rents them and later finds out, when she returns them, that they were 15 euro JUST for the ski’s (we got allll of our stuff for that price, sucks). So around 12 she is ready to hit the mountain, oh but of course more bad things happen.

First, her ski pants that she rented are about 3 sizes too small. I tell her she looks like John Travolta because they are literally spandex on her legs. They are also far too short, she looks hilarious. So her outfit becomes too tight blue plants, a brown Columbia zip up with a kstate gray sweatshirt over it, a red, orange, and black scarf, no hat, no sunglasses, and ONE GLOVE. She lost her other glove during her morning police adventures. Molly and I bought 2 Euro gloves the day before at a cheap Asians shop by our classroom, we should have known better. Everytime we fell snow would FILL the gloves, pretty awesome. So Molly’s first few passes down the mountain, she had to try super hard to not fall, and she couldn’t fall on one side since she didn’t have a glove on that hand. Later in the day I gave her an extra pair of sunglasses I found, and my friend Christina gave her an extra glove, so she was wearing mismatched gloves as well. I am telling you I have never laughed harder than when seeing Molly on the mountain. On a 3 person lift up, where about 200 people were waiting, no one would even sit with her. So after riding up in full lifts, we see Molly coming up all alone, in her ridiculous outfit, and SO COLD (it was the single most miserable experience of my life, the wind was blowing SO HARD, it was probably negative 20, and the lift was moving at a snail’s pace. I’m guessing it was a ten or 15 minute ride, and Molly had to suffer alone, in her horrible get-up, and with no body heat of others. Her day ROCKED).

At lunch Molly realized she had lost her Driver’s Liscence, but luckily when she returned her second pair of rented ski’s, they had found it. When we got back to the ski rental place she had to pay 50 Euro to replace the ski’s she had lost, which sucked, but could have been about 200 or 300 Euro if the guy was a jerk. So all in all, Molly’s day was pretty awful, but it gave us a really good laugh at times. WE LOVE YOU MOLLY!

Okay, so back to the rest of our day. Leah got up the Mountain with Christina, Grayson, and I and realized one of her boot/ski pairs wasn’t fitted, so she had to go figure that out, but Grayson, Christina, and I hit the slopes. We started with a green and I think I may have fallen once. Snowboarders fall a lot more than skiers, and it is expected, but there was really no reason for me to be falling, at all. I then realized that I hadn’t skied since I was 10, in 6th grade, in Breckenridge. So now being almost double my age, probably double my weight, my lack of experience was truly showcased.

Us three then went down a blue and all hell broke loose for me. It became apparent, very quickly, that I had absolutely no speed control. I was seriously FLYING down the mountain, and couldn’t slow myself down AT ALL. When I got going too fast I would usually hit a huge patch of ice and just wipe out like crazy. Usually my ski’s fell off, and usually my calves/feet/toes/thighs would cramp up, it was awesome. Throughout the day I got better, and even didn’t fall at ALL on one pass (about 20-25 minutes of skiing after taking a gondola and a long lift up after that), I was pretty proud of myself.

I face-planted probably 4 or 5 times throughout the day and fell close to 20 times. Grayson was usually near me and said she would laugh so hard that sometimes she couldn’t even get up (if she had fallen) or continue on after seeing me. She said I wouldn’t even try to stop myself, and I would just tumble down the mountain.. Many times I lost my ski’s and she would have to sled them down the mountain to me, since I usually sledded down about 20 feet on my butt/back after I fell. One time in particular, that we both still laugh so hard we can’t tell the story, is when I lost one of my ski’s in the middle of a pretty narrow and steep part of the pass. So I was basically screwed. She sledded my ski to me and after multiple failed attempts to put on a ski on a steep hill, I decided I had to just go down on my butt and my one ski until I could reach flatter ground. At the flatter grounds there are big red signs that have about 6 inches of room underneath them that say “DESPACIO”, which means “SLOW”. So as I am went down the hill on my one ski and sitting, I was doing circles, getting TONS of snow in my face, and just being a complete mess. As if this isn’t bad/funny enough for Grayson to watch, a man above us then loses a ski and it is going TOP SPEED past us. He decides to abandon his other ski and slides so fast on his back down the hill past me and UNDERNEATH the DESPACIO sign. I was in tears I was laughing so hard; Grayson was in hysterics after having just seen me do something almost equally ridiculous. The man’s ski had hopped the side of the mountain as he was limbo-ing on his back underneath a big red sign, poor guy.

Eventually all 5 of us girls got our lives out of shambles and went down all together and it was really fun. Our bus home left at 6:30 and the last lift went up at 4:30, so we had a lot of time to relax and hang out before our bus came. We were all really tired, but since it was really nice and sunny at the bottom of the mountain we decided to buy a beer and enjoy the rest of our day there. After Molly had to pay her 50 Euro for the lost skis, we rode the bus home (most of us passed out) and then took naps at our own homes. We were supposed to meet at 11 to go to a Tapas Bar (a place where if you buy a beer/wine/any drink you could a free small appetizer with it) but I was too tired and decided to just sleep the rest of the night until this morning.
As I write this, I am SO SORE, but so happy I went skiing, it was such a blast. Today I don’t know what I will do, but tonight we are going to a big discotecha called MaeWest. I guess it is sort of like the HAWK, but on a bigger scale. About 10 rooms of all different kinds of music and the girls in my dorm want to take us there because they love it. I can’t wait!

I haven’t written in a long time, I will try to stay more up to date. My refresher classes are going well, but between 4-7 I want to be napping, so sometimes it is hard to stay awake. We have homework due Monday, but it shouldn’t be too bad.
Sorry this was SO long. I love and miss everyone, SKYPE ME!