The rumors are true, this past Sunday I turned all of 27. This was my first and (with any luck) last birthday as a fiancé and it was a great one. Valerie and I took the opportunity of a weekend without many commitments and the occasion of my birthday to organize a little two day ski trip to Heavenly Ski Resort right on the Southern shores of Lake Tahoe. To be fair, Valerie did all of the organizing and she did a wonderful job. She rounded up a group of friends and booked us all a great little condo in the town of South Lake Tahoe for Friday night and bought me two days of skiing at Heavenly. (Friday and Saturday)
Friday was a beautiful and sunny day full of blue skies and nice soft snow. My friend, and future groomsman, Nick and I spent the day exploring the resort. It was great to get back on skis after a long time away from the sport and we had a great day crisscrossing the California/Nevada border and seeing how many trees we could dodge and rocks we could jump off of. It was also nice to experience a run called ‘Hully Gully’ which was marked as ‘super expert.’ That was the first time I’ve ever seen that classification on a run before and I guess my skiing has gone to a new level. Valerie doesn’t know it yet but from now on I’m going to insist on being addressed as “Super Expert DC” at all times; we’ll see how that goes over….
While Nick and I were skiing Valerie enjoyed her first snowshoeing experience with a nice hike around Fallen Leaf Lake. She went with Jess, Nick’s wife, and the two of them seemed to have a great time enjoying the same sunny blue skies and snow that Nick and I were playing in.
After we had all played in the snow for long enough we met back up and found our Condo for a night of good beer, good friends, and great kabobs. It was a really fun birthday celebration but it wouldn’t have been complete without the rocketship party decorations.
The next morning came a little too early and not nearly as sunny as the day before but we got up and got ready to go back out on the slopes. This time there were a few more of us to ski for the day including my beloved Valerie. Valerie had never really skied before so she was a little intimidated but I committed to stay with her and teach her until she felt more like a skier and less like a really confused person with two long boards strapped to her feet. Valerie was a great student and definitely a faster learner than most, if not all, of the adults I ever taught in Colorado. By her third run she was already making parallel turns, linking her turns, and smoothly dodging the strewn and scattered other beginner skiers and snowboarders who weren’t quite as adept as she was. She and I were both feeling quite confident in her abilities so I left to go take a few runs higher up the mountain. After a few more runs on the bunny hill Valerie decided that she was going to try and find some more challenging terrain. Well… long story short the next hour or so featured a bad piece of advice from a Heavenly staff person, a very slow and scared run down a steep and icy, windy, blue run, a freaked out voicemail on my phone, a much faster and slightly panicked run down that same blue run, and one very relieved reunion at the bottom of the hill. Valerie was no worse for the wear, except for some very cute snow crystals that were clinging to her hat and hair, and I was able to forgive myself for leaving her to go ski higher on the mountain.
Soon after our reunion at the bottom of the hill we packed up our gear and headed back to Berkeley. We got back sometime in the late evening and just barely got our stuff put away before we collapsed from the exhaustion of such a big weekend. Sunday, my actual birthday, broke with patches of sun and fog that framed our trip to church in the morning (Yes, I still had commitments to fulfill on my birthday) but by the time we got back home the fog was mostly gone and we enjoyed a nice quite day hanging out with friends in the courtyard of our school’s apartment complex. In the evening we went with some friends for Salvadoran Food (Yum!) and then returned to spend the remaining hours of a fantastic birthday weekend playing Nintendo and enjoying the company of good friends.
All in all, as you can see, it was a very busy but also really great birthday weekend. I’m so lucky to have such a loving woman in my life to plan such a great trip. Seriously, this weekend took some serious coordination and Valerie pulled it off smoothly and brilliantly. I’m almost embarrassed about how perfect my birthday was this year and even though the rain is falling on our roofs now, there is a little piece of me that is still warm and happy from all the love that surrounded me on the occasion of the celebration of my birth. Thank you, Valerie, and thank you everyone else that wished me happy birthday from near or far! It wouldn’t have been the same without any of you.
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