Tahoe Trip

One of the audit teams that Dave is on at work celebrated their year end by going on a weekend trip to Lake Tahoe. They were very nice and let spouses/ significant others come along. We left Friday afternoon. One of the other first years and her boyfriend (who came in town from Hawaii) rode with us which made the drive even better. We arrived at the cabin around 7pm. We were the first ones there which was nice because we got first dibs on where to sleep- sort of. There were (I think) 27 of us total and they had divided the beds up beforehand according to where the employee falls in the ranking system. The higher up you were in the company, the better the bed you got. Dave and I were assigned a convertible bed which meant either a futon or couch bed.  Dave and I choose the room off of the main family room which we thought was a great option. We had dinner once most everyone arrived and watched a movie. I went to bed around midnight because I was exhausted from working Thursday night. Dave joined me in bed around 2am. Quite a few people arrived after we went to bed, and the party sure did start once everyone got there. Most everyone was up til 4:30 or so. They were all hanging out in the family room outside Dave and I’s bedroom. It turns out the drunker everyone got, the louder they became. Needless to say, we were very happy when they decided to call it a night. Call me old and boring, but I have come to really appreciate the couple times a week where I can sleep at night.

We got up around 7:30 in the morning. I was honestly surprised at how awake and chipper everyone was for only sleeping for 3 hours. We then headed for the Heavenly Resort. Dave and I started out on the bunny hill. Dave had not been skiing since High School and I hadn’t skied since I was very young because I switched over to snowboarding about 10 years ago (even though I was not very good at it).  We went down the bunny hill a couple of times and then moved on to the green runs. We had a ton of fun. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the 50’s. I had dressed in 9 layers of clothes that morning because I didn’t want to get cold. After I had gotten dressed to leave, Dave told me I looked soft and ready. Oh Dave, always making me the laugh. After an hour or so of skiing, Dave and I both had to get rid of a few layers of clothing because we were so hot. It could not have been a more perfect day for skiing!

The soft and ready Liz

Dave is a lot better than me at skiing, actually anything athletic in general, so he went on a couple of advanced runs without me. He went all the way to the top of the mountain and got some really cool pictures of the view overlooking Lake Tahoe.

Heavenly Resort is set up quite interestingly. The runs right above the lodge are double black diamond runs. Because of this, you have to take a ski lift over these advanced runs to a higher point on the mountain to get to the green, blue or other black runs. Ski lifts scare me to death.  I am usually not afraid of heights, but ski lifts are a definite exception. I was ok on the way up, but taking the lift on the way down was SO SCARY! The mountain was very steep and with the lift being pretty high up it was a recipe for sheer terror. My heart was beating so fast. I was holding on for dear life while closing my eyes. Dave had to keep reminding me to breathe. There was one point where the lift stopped so the chair starting swinging and I think I almost peed my pants. I have never been so excited to have my feet back on the ground. When I looked back up at the lift after getting off, I asked Dave how that did not scare him. He told me he was scared, but that he didn’t think it would help the situation if he told me. Smart move Dave. Two of us freaking out for 249 seconds… (yes I counted to try and distract myself) would have been a bad combo.

Saturday night, Chris (the partner over the team/ account) took us out for a delicious dinner. That night we also realized how sunburned our faces were. Dave’s definitely more so than mine. Lesson learned- we will never forget to put on sunscreen before skiing again.  This was such a great weekend vacation and it was nice to get to know some of Dave’s coworkers. He works with so many fun and entertaining people.