Presidents' Day Weekend in Mammoth
The annual Presidents' Day trip this year goes to Mammoth.
As we are getting old-- for Keith and Sophia this is the seventh (?) year-- we grabbed a three bedroom condo this time instead of a smaller one, and much to our surprise, it had two padded benches near the fireplace in addition to the couch and the sofabed in the living room, so no one had to sleep on the floor. We even had an extra bunk the first night, despite being packed with 13 people. Crazy.
The last-minute additions of Barry, Vic, Cyrus, and Jeanine (sp?) made it up early Friday to ski, as Barry and Victor had to leave Sunday morning. The rest of us made it up at a slightly less unreasonable hour, although "slightly less unreasonable" may purely be a matter of perspective. Keith, Delia, and I went up 15 to 395, stopping by Schat's Bakery in Bishop for their delicious sourdough cheese bread and garlic cheese bread on the way to Mammoth.
We were at Mammoth Estates again, only this time the cabin was full of family pictures and a few other surprises; most of the cabins at Mammoth Estates and other places leave the owners fairly anonymous; this one actually had a guest book in addition to the pictures!
Dinner Friday was at the Auld Dubliner in the village; we had the majority of the group arrive in time for dinner, which was quite a change from previous years. Ray and Molly were in from the Bay Area, while Barry, victor, Cyrus, Jeanine, Keith, Delia, and I were in from SoCal. Lots of corned beef and soup... very tasty.
Saturday was announced by both the existence of a lousy coffee maker and the fact that the bacon had been forgotten in Los Angeles. ACK! (thus making one of many trips to Vons by Keith...) Looking outside revealed a beautiful day with clear skies, no wind, and 53F expected as the afternoon high. Holy crap, that's going to melt the 32" of snow received in the last week. Not that we minded too much; after all, who can really complain about this kind of weather? Going up and down Chairs 9, 16, 4, and 5 to play in the terrain park and on the variety of blues and blue-blacks, the proper answer is to enjoy the weather and the snow beneath your feet. Delia demonstrated how nice the snow was on Manzanita. (video, right-click-save-as, 52MB)
Dinner was pasta, made under Sophia and Tara's supervision (yum!), then gaming. Scrabble, dominos, Tichu, Big 2, etc. Cranium was pretty good; evidently Delia plays with clay very well, Barry can act, and Bill/Annie/Sophia/Tara are just far too good at Cranium for their own good. *grins* We did far too good a job of stuffing ourselves, as usual...
Sunday was announced by the creation of pancakes and sausage by Bill and Annie, along with more sandwiches for lunch by Barry, Cyrus, and company. And snow! Gently falling at 6:45am, it got a bit heavier by the time Barry and Vic made their escape back to Los Angeles. By 11am on Solitude, it was coming down pretty hard. Vortices of snow snaking across the top half of Solitude were unpleasantly cold and made things hard to see. By the time Bill, Tara, Ray, Molly, and I came down Sanctuary to Face of Five to Solitude, we were going down black diamonds almost blind.
Well, not quite that bad-- but when you can't see the bumps on the ground as the fresh powder accumulates, it's a nice workout. After risking our lives inside the cafeteria to find a table for lunch, Bill and I headed off to try a few harder runs, while Ray, Molly, Sophia, and Tara elected to remain sane, since we were all getting tired by now. Needless to say, Bill and I promptly got our butts kicked-- Bill on Lower Grizzly, which we had tried to avoid as it was covered on moguls, then down Slide Show, which also turned out to be covered in moguls. Doing a few more runs was tempting, but we were looking at the remains of the muscles in our legs and decided we didn't want to hurt anything . . .
Things were followed up by another beer run (!) (yes, the crowd has changed that much from previous years!), then enough vegetable, pork, and chicken skewers were made under Delia's car to feed 20. We only had 11 people, so we had waaaay too much food again. Hey, no one was complaining, and it was tasty!
Thirteen/Big 2 followed, then Battle of the Sexes. (video, right-click-save-as, 593MB) As no one had ever played Battle of the Sexes before, it was a lot of fun. The girls thought about every question they had to answer, while the guys, for the stuff it was obvious none of us knew, pretty much just threw out whatever we thought sounded good. The girls felt it was male-biased, although later communication with others such as Alicia shows a difference of opinion there. In any case, the goal of the game is to get your piece (or pieces) across the board, answering "female" questions correctly (as asked by the girls) for guys and answering "male" questions correctly (as asked by the guys). Some questions were pretty much impossible, others were ridiculously easy. I think the biggest surprise was what we didn't know about each other, or as Bill eloquently put, "do you know why we're winning? because they can't figure out what we don't know". *grins* Looking at the group, the majority of us had known each other for at least five years-- Keith, Molly, Tara, the Tsai siblings, and myself, plus we had a few couples there. You'd expect these people to know each other fairly well. Accusations of both Ray and I knowing a few facts that surprised everyone added to the entertainment, too. No, we weren't holding out, we just have brains full of random, almost-useless facts!
Playing Big 2 til 1:30am in the morning probably wasn't the smartest thing either, but we mixed it up by removing poker hands and other simple changes that changed the flavor of the game.
Ray and Molly, well, just Molly for the most part, did a traditional Taiwanese breakfast the next morning. MMMMMMMMMMM... soooo good. We then packed up, took care of an incident Tara had, and headed down the mountain and back home. Keith and Tara played catch-up as we headed down 395, and seven of us stopped for lunch at Pizza Factory in Lone Pine.
As expected, we were back in Los Angeles by 4pm. Not bad-- 5 hours of driving plus an hour for lunch.
Next year, this shall happen again . . . Whistler anyone?
Left photo Left to right: Tara, Keith, Annie, Bill, Sophia, Ray, Molly, Delia, Cyrus, Jeanine, Brian
Right photo: Left to right: Tara, Keith, Annie, Bill, Sophia, Ray, Molly, Cyrus, Jeanine, Delia, Brian
Video is available here, Delia skiing, then lots of shots from Cranium, then Battle of the Sexes, then the drive home...
