Tahoe looks like one big mountain of Taho

No, it doesn't really, but Filipinos always pronounce Tahoe (Tah-hoe) like Taho (ta-ho').

We drive up to Tahoe Friday afternoon to beat the rush. The storms from last Wednesday and Thursday were sure to send a shrill up those skiers and boarders just itching to ride. We finally find the Tahoe Lakeshore Lodge and Spa which was a fabulous place to stay and we chalk it up to hotel karma for bringing us there. For the price of most of the hotel rooms on the Nevada side of the stateline, you get two queen beds, a view of the lake, a gas fireplace (which they have lit and ready), and a full size kitchen complete with pots, utensils, and plates. (We easily imagine our families easily accomodating 20 folks in this room complete with pots of steaming arroz caldo on the stove.) To which we exclaimed on first site, "Score!"

For dinner we head across the stateline to Caesar's for the buffet. Thumbs up on the seafood bar with fresh oysters, but the rest was only ok. Afterwards we check out the casino, though most of us don't gamble, the SO was thinking about it. We have been attending a monthly poker night and he's been studying the percentages. Roulette is just random guessing to me. Craps seems complicated considering it's only about 2 dotted cubes. I should have been paying more attention to the guys shooting craps in the hall way in junior high school. We got into watching Pai Gow Poker which is different from Pai Gow that I always see full of Asians. The SO wasn't feeling the betting vibe so we went back to the hotel to sleep for the next day.

The next morning we got up early and opened the window to a pristine layer of snow outside our window. Our first floor room walked out onto the thin Lake Tahoe beach which was just a sheet of untouched white powder. We watched as a pair of geese land on the silken blanket.

Flux, the watcher, and I were going to go to Heavenly. Flux, a self taught boarder, was going to hit the slopes while the watcher and I tumble our way through a lesson and bunny slopes. The SO decides to tag along and hang out at the warm and toasty ski lodge with his poetry book and journal. This is really the reason the SO and I are here. Flux and the Watcher want to ski, but Flux can board and the Watcher is a newb (newbie). I'm here to be a newb with the Watcher. The SO is here, well, so it's an even number for dinner and to take pictures and be the self-designated lodge sitter holding the ever important food table in the always crowded overpriced cafeteria. (The SO is also here to contemplate the snow covered America he imagined as a child in the Philippines. He can tell you more about that.

Being newbs I don't know what equipment goes with what. My sister tells me to borrow her board which we put bindings on so I can just rent boots. But they don't just rent the boots cuz they are clips ons, not the kind that go into the strap bindings on my sister's board. Of course, the people at the rental area, don't tell me this and I discover this sitting at the ski lesson area. I'm a newb, what do I know? So, as cute as my sister's board was (pink with butterfly stomp pad), I had to use the heavier rental boards. See, if you can't ski, then you should look cute. After heading back to the lodge to get things fixed, I barely make it to the board riding lesson. whew!

We feel like astronauts with huge heavy boots, zippered in layers, tinted goggles, going out onto the vast foreign landscape that is snow.

We learn things like hooking the latch of the board onto our boots, stomping to get snow out, heel edge, toe edge, how to get off of a ski lift. Ideally, by the end, we're supposed to be able to have our board do a technique called, "falling leaf" where we essentially snow plow gracefully left and right down the hill. I think we looked more like tumbleweed. I am eternally grateful for the 2 semesters of judo lessons in college particularly after the first fall which was face down. The instructor kept telling us to bend knees, back straight and either lean like you had "no butt" or had a "big butt." After the lesson he tells us there's a nice newbie slope at the top of this steep looking lift, there's a nice newbie run called, "Patsy." To the right of us is a run called, "first run," completely exclusive for newbies like us, the white run dotted with boarders and skiers sitting on their asses. We'd rather not be called patsies.

I'm feeling good after the lesson. I'm really feeling this snowboarding thing. It feels right. As I watch the skiers, I'm reminded of my first and last attempt at skiing. I remember how it was in one sense easier to maneuver because of the thinner skis. But I also remember how hard it was on my knees to bring the knees together then angle the skis so they form a triangle, but how they never did. My the walk down the hill was quite lovely that day. I got no shame in my game. Though I can see from the experienced skiers how skiing can be quite leisurely and how snowboarding can be quite fast.

We break for lunch to get something to drink and meet up with the guys. Flux, in the 2 hours we were taking lessons, had gone on 4 different runs including a few single diamond runs. I can't imagine what double diamond looks like. We find the SO at a table in the cafeteria and excitedly tell him how many times we fell. The SO's face seems pained. He doesn't like pain.

The SO asks me if I like snowboarding enough to buy a set of equipment. I tell him that I'd rather rent a board for a while, since I'm just bashing it up. I think that if I make it down a bunny hill without falling, I feel deserving of my own snowboard. I do not think that day will be today. We discuss how if we ever bring the "kids" to the snow. I would go out there and assist the kids hands on and he would be the lodge "dad" with the camera taking pictures.

After lunch Flux decides to slow down his day and head to the newbie run with us. The first challenge getting off the lift, which was not that bad. We stayed up for the most part. Three on a lift is hard. Especially when 2 of the 3 don't really know how to control what we're doing. Fortunately on the newbie run, they can stop the lift to keep subsequent folks from running you over. I appreciate that.

The run gets off the lift, then turns, then goes down straight the whole way with sloped and flat areas in between. You can't possibly gain that much speed. A dozen people are on their butts just off the lift, mostly boarders with both feet attached trying to push themselves back up. One technique requires you to push yourself up and over the board before the board slides forward. Another makes you flip yourself with your board attached with your face on the ground and push yourself up from there. Skiing has an advantage here. You fall, usually a ski pops off, you walk and go get it, pop it on, and ski again. Though you may have to chase your skis down the hill a bit.

This is why there are so many boarders sitting, they are all pondering the mass of their asses to figure out how to get back up on their feet.

The second pile up happens on the first and only turn of the run. Lesson 1 did not include lessons on how to turn, at least not the sharper turns required for this. But we all know how to stop with our butts. Next after falling on the turn, you drag yourself trying to position yourself down the hill without running into anyone. This is difficult as the numbers of falling leaves increases with each lift chair arrival. You get to meet new friends this way.

Flux helps us as best he can. A brave soul since he often put him and his board down hill from us.

I'm trying to remember all the tips from the lesson: no butt, toe, heel, weight. I slowly make my way down the hill. I'm kind of getting it. I try something, it works a bit, I fall. But I'm making it work. As I'm sitting in the snow, I realize that the board is kind of symmetrical so it doesn't matter whether I go down the hill with my left leg front or my back leg front (the back of the board). Once I make this revelation, things finally snap into place. I had this obsession with having the front part of the board, my left leg, go down the hill first, because that's what the instructor said, but the board would always turn so you go backwards, sideways.

So here I am cruising down the hill, I'm kind of getting that left and right lean thing, I've got my edge going, there's a vast empty run ahead of me with one boarder crashed in the middle with plenty of room either side. I'm thinking, yeah, I can clear her, no problem. What happens? I head straight for her without any way to turn. I use the emergency break we were taught, my ass.

I attempt to get back up on my feet to no avail (either I'm too tired, of the slope isn't steep enough or both), so I sit there for a bit to rest and comtemplate my ass. As much as my instructor told us to stand like we "don't have a butt" I cannot tell you how big my butt was feeling. I don't have that big of a butt, but somehow sitting in the snow, falling on it, trying to lift it off the ground, my butt just seemed a WHOLE lot heavier than I thought it was. Unlike swimming, that makes your butt feel light and weightless. Snowboarding makes your tush feel like a rock, a rock that loves gravity and the ground.

I look up the hill towards Flux and the Watcher. Flux is attempting to assist the Watcher and give her tips on snowboarding. There are some couple things that are nice to do together, like walks on the beach, hikes, dinner. There are some couple things that will test your relationship: ballroom dance lessons, and the student-teacher dynamic of your partner trying to teach you something. But if you find ways to survive these things, your relationship can do pretty well. As the Watcher puts it, "this is just death." I only know this, because I've been there. As I watch them attempt to "synchronize snowboard" down the hill, I'm proud to have kept a couple together.

This is because if the Watcher and Flux had to come here by themselves, someone would have left the weekend unhappy. The Watcher would have been sick of hearing Flux's "boarding tips" which she can't comprehend because she doesn't have the snow experience to understand and Flux either would have never gotten to ride any of the cool runs or would have felt bad for leaving his partner to suffer down the bunny slope. This is one of the keys to a good relationship....other couples to keep you from going crazy in your own. This is why coupled people tend to go out with other couples. Not because they don't like single people or that they have more things to talk about with other couples, it's so they can keep their relationship together. With another couple, you can kind of switch couples a bit. The girls can talk together. The guys can talk together. You can talk with a person of the opposite sex not your partner. Variety and balance, it's great!

I make it down the run and wait for them to come down. I watch as everyone else tumbles down the hill slowly but surely. Some of the kids wear helmets. The older kids don't. They still fall, but they don't mind so much. They have less mass, so they don't hit the ground as hard. Plus, when they put their hands on the ground, they don't fall over. They also tend not to feel as bad as adults when they crash into other people. They just think it's funny. Adults feel bad when they do that cuz well they're adults and they "should have known better." Falling is a mistake. As we grow old, we dislike publicly making mistakes.

A friend of mine told me this story, when a group of kindergartners were asked, "can you explain Einstein's theory of relativity?" most of them raised their hands. A handful of schoolkids did. One or two high school kids did. And no adults raised their hand. As adults we know what we don't know and we don't like to show that we don't know it so we often don't try.

A small kid with a helmet crashes into his father below as his father cries, "caught ya!" The kid, though alright, was frightened by the speed and starts the cry. His father advises him, "you're ok. when you go too fast, just fall on your butt like I taught you."

There are certainly more boarders than skiiers on the slope. Some of the boarders give up and simply use their board as a tobaggan down the slope. Another fellow walks proudly down the hill with his skis and poles on his shoulder, but his outfit was very cute. No shame in his game. A woman declares, "This isn't a bunny slope, this is some kind of intermediate slope like for advanced people!"

I look up the hill and watch this boarder in a light blue jacket take a few flips. Dang! It turns out to be the Watcher. Oh the agony of defeat. (We remember the ABC Wide World of Sports ski jumper that coincides with that statement, don't we?). She survives with a few bruises on her ego.

We decide to take another try at the bunny slope before heading home. Our second dismount off the lift is not as successful and we crash into a heap. That's going to hurt tomorrow. The second time we make it down a tad better.

We meet up with the SO, get our astronaut boots off and returned. The Watcher tells the SO about her tumble. He finds inspiration, writes a haynaku. It's a good day for everyone. We head back to the hotel, rest, then contemplate how to finish the day.