We left on a Friday filled with cold rain and bad traffic, and the entire journey for me was almost 7.5 hours since I had to meet Bobby in Palo Alto before we could meet Nic and Youky in San Francisco. But it was well worth it as the car ride up was entertaining, we stopped at In n Out, and when we got to the cabin, there was food ready for us.

I had a shit night’s sleep because my sleep pattern has been disturbed greatly by marathon watching of The Wire, so I kept tossing and turning. At one point, Youky screamed loudly in her sleep on the other side of our gigantic king size bed, which I found highly entertaining. Finally, it was time to get up, suit up, and drive ourselves to Kirkwood.

My name is not "GUI" as written on the board.

The best part about going with Youky  is that we are/were on pretty much the same level so we could have someone to go with, even if we occasionally lost each other when either one of us fell too far behind. There was a storm the day before we went, so the fresh powder that would be any experienced snowboarder’s dream, turned out to be our greatest enemy that day. We kept finding ourselves stuck in the snow as the powder built up on our boards, with nowhere else to go but down on our faces. I had a hell of a time trying to hop out of the powder while simultaneously shoveling snow out with my hands, and oftentimes found myself pathetically breathless after getting stuck. A couple of times, losing our momentum caused us to just straight up get stuck in the snow. Youky kept me entertained as I watched her crawl around, trying to get back up.

But the joke was on me when I tried to push and pull Youky on the flattened path until we found a slope, and she pushed me down for her own gain, got some leverage, and started sliding forward as I was forced to unbuckle and shimmy until I felt I could go down on my own.

The other part about boarding with Youky is we were prone to wanting breaks at roughly the same time. My favorite part of any ski trip is lunch, and while I was sad that I didn’t save money by packing a lunch because I didn’t realize there were vegetarian sandwich fixings, I was pretty pleased with my garden burger with BBQ sauce.

nom nom nom

When we first hit the slopes, I kind of wondered to myself, why am I doing this? It didn’t seem all that fun, even though I was slightly better than the last time I went. It was tiring, the powder was hell, and I didn’t feel like I was doing much besides going downhill fairly slowly. But then I started trying new things, stopped worrying about falling – and the more you try, the more you fall – and worked on trying to improve. Toe side still boggles my mind, and every time I attempted it, I ate it. But, I’m kinda a pro at doing heel side. I still can’t figure out if I’m goofy or regular, because I get my board set up for regular, but feel more comfortable going goofy (I think). All I know is this time was a personal best with six runs, no major wipeouts or injuries, a feeling that I was actually improving, and by the end of the day, a desire to do it again sometime. And then I twisted my ankle and stubbed my toe getting into the hot tub. Wah wah.