Snow Play

Went with the family up to Lake Tahoe for a couple days last Sunday and Monday.  No big deal for those of you who actually get all 4 seasons, but it's been a few years since my kids were in the snow, so they enjoyed it quite a bit.  It was cold and snowy.  Rather than ski, we went tubing and ice skating, along with some other stuff.  First day of tubing was at a little hill where they created a couple lanes and you paid $10 for their inner tubes and got a good workout hiking back up.  Not much fun for the adults, and the kids quickly got tired of walking back up the hill and wanted to go have a snowball fight.  After that, we went down to the lakeshore and tried to build a snowman, but there wasn't enough fresh snow, so we gave up.

We ate dinner at the Harrah's Lake Tahoe buffet, but in spite of being there for dinner and our hotel only a block away, I didn't gamble.  The poker room is actually at their sister hotel across the street -- Harvey's -- and isn't big, nor do they spread a big game, so I didn't feel like I was missing much.  Instead, we gave the kids some cash and let them go nuts in the arcade.  Every kid's arcade on the planet (or at least on the West Coast) now seems to have a mix of actual arcade video games and other games where the objective is to collect as many paper tickets as you can, to later trade in for prizes.  I think if you spent about $5000, and got lucky with the games, you could get a Wii.  That said, my son might have some future as a gambler.  He played this roulette game where you had to select the color a spinning ball would stop on.  There were 6 different colors, all with different "odds" based on how big a slot corresponded to the color.  He went 5-for-5 and collected massive tickets.  Those, along with tickets from another $15 or so worth of games was good for a cool looking key chain and a little bit of candy :).  He almost had enough for the stuffed football, but just missed :(.

Next day, 3 of the 4 of us strapped on ice skates for the first time (my wife ice skated before).  I'm certainly not good, but having done a lot of inline skating gave me a head start picking up ice skating, and I managed to be able to skate around pretty confidently, although nothing fast or anything, and I never did try to stop quickly.  My daughter now wants to do ice skating for her birthday party, so maybe I'll have a chance to skate again soon.

The final thing we did was to go tubing at a different place, actually part of a decent-sized ski resort.  On the side of the beginner's run near the base lodge, they set up a tubing run.  This place used the same sort of tubes that you use for going tubing behind a ski boat, and they hooked the tubes up to a rope tow, so you didn't have to hike up the hill.  The ultimate for lazy guys!  Actually, I didn't think any of the tubing was all that fun, with once exception.  What they did at the bottom of the hill was to build a wall and put some rubber mats in front of it to slow you down.  You go about half way up the wall, then go gently back down where you get out of the tube.  One time, I went down with my son.  With the extra weight came some extra speed.  And for some reason we missed the rubber mats.  Not only did we fly over the wall, we cleared the fence they had behind the wall just to catch the occasional tuber who goes over.  Evidently, we cleared it by a lot.  Behind this wall is just a steep drop to the ski slope below.  We bounced a couple times, then ended up on the ski slope.  Until my son realized he'd whacked the side of his head pretty good, he thought it was the best thing ever.  I was just happy to be in one piece, but given that I was, it was pretty cool.  Tubing X-games FTW. 

Evidently, none of the workers there had ever seen anyone clear the fence, and the guy at the top of the run didn't even wait to see if we were alright...he was sure we'd need some medical attention, so he radioed the ski patrol to come get us.  Hmm, seems kind of lame writing it up, but at the very least, it broke the monotony for the ride attendants..they kept talking about it until we left a couple hours later.

I'll try to have some poker content next time...haven't played too much, but what little I have has been going better, but still some things to keep working on.  Been chatting with my coach, and neither of us is pleased with the progress I've been making (or more accurately that the progress isn't maintained...do some stuff well, then regress, then get better again, etc.).  More thoughts on that next time.