The Cousins at Karaoke (from Melanie)

We came back from our Devil's Head ski trip yesterday. It was a bitch to coordinate, with a lot of people saying they were coming out, then cancelling at the last minute. Sure, some had valid excuses, but it's hard to plan a trip for a big group of people, arrange the hotel rooms, get a group rate, then have a bunch of people cancel at the last minute. Next time I don't want to take part in the planning! It must have been ten times harder on Dan since he was the one doing the planning.

Dave and I headed out on Saturday morning, since he was on-call and didn't get home from work until 8:30 Saturday morning. Pretty much everyone else got there Friday night, and they got to go to the casino and party without us. We got to Devil's Head at around noon, and as soon as we saw the mountain we laughed. Mammoth Mountain in California had spoiled us - Devil's Head looked like a mere hill in comparision. The top of Mammoth was 13,000 feet above sea level - Devil's head was a tenth of that - a mere 900. saw my cousins Marian and Michael in the parking lot and we headed in.

I had a great time snowboarding and hanging out with everyone. Rather than put it in a long narrative, I'll just throw in the highlights:

- Marian was like the energizer bunny as she was learning to snowboard on the bunny hill. She never used the tow rope, she would take 5 minutes to walk up the hill, 5 minutes ot put on her bindings (which were snap ons) and then 30 seconds to go down the hill - if she didn't fall. Then the cycle would begin all over again for the whole day. She was a trouper - ending the day covered in ice and snow.

- Poor Melanie, who was also learning to ski with her friends Kim and Rainier. She was picking up snowboarding pretty well, but then face planted on the snow - not right on her face, but on the side, but enough for her nose to stop bleeding and the ski patrol to be called in. Then, hours later, as she was going down the hill, she came to a stop, caught on an edge and fell backwords. As she tried to stop her fall, she fell on her arm and was rushed to the emergency room. Yes, the ski patrol was busy. The funny thing is, we weren't around when it happened, and heard it all second hand, and we all thought it was Kim that broke her arm, so I left a voicemail on Mel's phone checking on Kim's condition.

- I spent most of the morning giving Marian pointers on the slopes. When I finally went up the ski lift, I had planned on going on an easy hill, but Dan talked me into going onto an intermediate hill without my easy hill warmup. I was a little nervous, but when I went down that blue, it was SO EASY! I remember last time I was at Devil's Head on skis and I thought that trail was so hard, but with all my snowboarding skills (which are minimal) and living the horror of getting lost on Mammoth Mountain and skiing the advanced there (I haven't told you THAT story yet!) the intermediates were nothing!

- Night skiing was $5 dollars more, so we decided to take advantage of it. Dave talked me into trying out the black diamonds, which made me a bit leery, since it was night skiing and the falls on Devil's Head hurt a lot more than what I was used to. BUt we went on it with Michael (who sees Dave as his snowboarding Mr. Miyagi) and it was AWESOME! It was about the difficulty of the blues on Mammoth, and with the icy conditions, there was a lot of speed on the trail. It was scary to fall, because on the lift you could hear the boards 'skkkkkrrrrrtttcccchhhhh'-ing the snow/ice. When people felt you could hear the *boom* from far away.

- The day wasn't too cold. As Marian went down a couple times, she was starting to get a bit warm. So she saw that Melanie and a couple of her friends were up on the mountain. She takes off her jacket and looks at the one white guy with them, who had been sitting with the group watching and giving pointers, and says, "Hey, I'm Marian! Can you hold my jacket for me?" then ran away to board some more. The guy was left with a quizzical look on his face. Marian didn't know that the guy she gave her jacket to was their snowboarding instructor!

- A group of us raced down the greens, and went immediately back in line. Michael realized that Maui, his partner was gone, so he said, "Hey, where's Maui?" We all turned and saw him come down the mountain, then totally bail and fall. We all let out a "Ohhh! Damn!" and just bust out laughing, because it was a really good fall. He got up, shook it off, then continued down, but he started cramping up and crashed into a guy, which led us to say, "Damn!" again. It was so funny because it all happened in seconds. "Where's Maui?" "Ohhh!!!!" "Damn!"

- Aquaman, a.k.a Sam, did not break any bones and picked up skiing pretty quickly. He had nothing to worry about! Well, except for that whole stopping thing - he still needs to work on that. We introduced Sam to Marian as 'Aquaman'. She called us cruel to be giving him pet names like that, but never bothered to ask for his real name. Later on in the day, we were talking about Sam and she was like, 'Oh, that's Aquaman's real name?'

- Dan bought this game called 'The Shocker' or something. Four people hold these handles with clickers on them, and you press a button that all these handles are attached to. A red light goes on and this eerie music starts playing, and the the light turns green. As soon as the light turns green you have to click your button. Last one to click gets a shock. And this isn't a little vibration shock, this is a full on shock that goes straight up your arm and makes you scream. It was a hilarious game to play, but more hilarious when you weren't wracking your nerves playing it.

- We went to the bar that night for some karaoke. It was a total blast, and I laughed so hard that my tummy hurt. We were drinking, eating and having a good time. Watched Tony, Maui and Eva rocked the house with their singing. We were all a rowdy bunch. Tony sang John Mellencamp's "I Fought Authority", dedicated to his legions of employees. It's fun to see your manager on his knees on the floor singing with a napkin tied around his head. Maui made us all teary eyed dedicating John Mayer's 'Daughters' to his little girl Jillian, who he had left at home. There were some others from Detroit that really got us hyped with 'Bust a Move' (to which Tony was doing the running man, alone, on the dance floor to). I don't think I've ever had so much fun doing karaoke. And no, I did not sing. I will not put people through that torture!

- The trip to brunch the next morning was eventful. Dan said that he knew of a Perkins down the street, which wasn't there - it was a Denny's, so he passed it, and we moved on, all the way to the Wisconsin Dells, and into the parking lot of another Dennys. Then he realized that there was a Perkins down the street, which we headed to after finding out there was a long wait at Denny's.

- I didn't have my camera for most of the trip, since my digital is really bulky and I forgot my film camera at the office. I did, however, take pictures of the boys playing at the pool, doing some very dangerous tricks like jumping into the pool while sitting in the chair. Aquaman also showed his powers over water by squeezing it out of the football.

The trip was a great time. I wish I remembered my camera, but you can see Melanie's pictures which really rock. I really love snowboarding, even though I'm a pretty slow and cautious boarder, I'm still having a great time up there. We'll have to do it again sometime, and maybe everyone will be able to make it this time!

Posted by Yano at January 31, 2005 09:50 AM

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