The hunt for a cherry blossom tree

Location: Kadena, Okinawa, Japan

Holy crap on a cracker (famously quoting the chick on the Big Bang Theory which I watched 7 episodes of in the past 12 hours - funny-ish show... more so when it's your only option for English television... I digress).

I'm in Asia!

And honestly, I'm not NEARLY as overwhelmed as I thought it was going to be.

I got to the airport early; graciously dropped off by Lauren on her way to work (thank you again, love! You're amazing!) I had some breakfast and waited for the counter to open. I ran into the guys from Atreyu who were on my flight and chatted for a bit while we waited. The flight was really quite lovely. Within minutes of taking off, the stewardess' were coming by with my free Kirin. And before I had time to finish it, they were around to offer a second - which I did not turn down. Our lunch was quick behind. For the appetizer, smoked salmon, potato salad, turkey pastrami salad. For the main course grilled eel, rice, Japanese noodles and a roll. Then we got ice cream and green tea... more beer... and that's when I popped a couple Tylenol PMs as well. I started dozing off about half way through the Informant (meh) and then woke up right before... well... dinner! Dinner, wasn't so amazing (some strange mushroom and tofu concoction - i think) so I won't describe, but it was still food, for free. Which rocks.

The second flight was quick and relatively painless. It was me and a whole plane full of marines reporting for duty (which made for an interesting ride, to say the least). Mandy, my cousin, was waiting for me outside the airport when I arrived and I was so excited to see her. I was pretty exhausted, so we came straight home and went to bed (about midnight, it worked out well) and rested up for a big day of sight seeing today.

We started early, and Mandy and I took little Katie to search for some cherry blossom trees. We drove up to Nago where the annual cherry blossom festival is held (next week) and found one (single) tree that was blooming. Only one. So I screamed and made Mandy pull over and took as many pictures as possible. It was a tiny tree.

We drove all around the island plotting out our plans for tomorrow - of which there are many - and we made a stop at the Pineapple theme park where we rode a pineapple golf cart ride through the pineapple grove and then spent a half hour tasting pineapples in every form possible (liquor, wine, dried, fresh, jelly, chocolate and cake). We also took a stop at the blown glass factory and watched people take their turn at glass blowing and looked at a bunch of trinkets (including the cutest penny sized glass panda that I almost bought but realized I have absolutely no reason, nor any place to put it).

Waiting around now, Alan is home from work and we're about to put Katie down. We have a babysitter tonight so we have big plans! Word on the street is Yoshi (the man who owns the sushi place we're going to) serves blowfish and there's something about lips tingling and poisonous fish that makes me a bit excited.

XOXO

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An amazing end to the first leg of a very long trip

Location: Los Angeles, California, USA

If you thought I wasn’t lucky enough to get two bluebird days in one ski session, you were wrong – although the second evening of snow was merely a trace, it was still a gorgeous sunny day and I count it.

I took a day off between ski days to relax and allow myself to recover from the first full day back on the slopes since last season. Fortunately, I didn’t need the rest too much as I was surprisingly, not that sore. I slept in late while Dan worked and then he accompanied me on a quick drive into Invermere. The trip was originally intended to catch some photos of some gorgeous scenery I had passed on the way into town the night before, but after getting all the way down the mountain, I realized that I forgot the SD card for my camera… awesome.

So we decided to just chill out a bit. We walked out on Lake Lillian where they had a cute skating rink banked off with snow (although the rink was not skatable as it was mostly covered in snow). After that we drove down to the main lake in Invermere (Lake Windermere) and then drove ON the lake. I was quite a bit nervous at first but Dan coached me through it and we drove out as far as another small 2 wheel drive car. We walked around skated a bit farther out and then the novelty wore off and we drove right back off. What was really cool about this lake was that there is actually a legitimate road that drives right across the middle and where we were parked (on the water) there was an ice hockey rink, a fishing hole, a bonfire pit and an ice garden set up by the park association. There was also a cross country skiing track setup around the perimeter. Really cool.

After we left the lake, we picked up some items at the grocery store for our contribution to Alana’s going away pot luck later in the evening, picked up a hitchhiker (aka one of Dan’s friends) and drove back up to Pano.

Alana is one of Dan’s friends who actually stayed with my parent’s when they did the cross-country drive from Pano to North Carolina and I had heard wonderful things about her. She is moving back home and so some friends put together a little pot luck going away party. Dan and I decided that our contribution needed to be nothing other than… queso. I actually found Velveeta at the supermarket and ghetto rigged up some ro-tel. It was a huge hit and I thought, a very clever contribution to the evening :)

The night ended relatively early after a really nice house party and we all prepared ourselves for a long day of skiing ahead.

We woke up around 9:30 and got dressed quickly to be on the mountain at 10. Dan, Emma, another friend, Harper, and I all met up to ski down some runs before meeting up with Nick and Alister at the base at noon. It was a really fun crowd and we had a great time. The snow was still pretty great and we hiked a bit further down Taynton Bowl to the very end, a run called Whitetail, which was a bit steeper than B1st but immensely shorter. I got some excellent skiing advice from Nick, who coaches on the mountain, and I started to feel a lot more comfortable with the double blacks (just in time for another year long skiing hiatus). We skied all day but never really tired and were greeted at home with another amazing hot meal prepared by one of Dan’s roomie’s, Amy. Tonight, a chicken curry, which was warm and delicious and exactly what I needed.

We took a quick dip in the hot tub before heading to watch Alister play in a broomball game played up on the frozen over tennis courts. The game was hilarious; it’s basically a more formalized version of the street hockey we used to play with a soccer ball back home. Short broom sticks with a flat end and a soccer ball kicked and swatted back and forth between tipsy employees slipping all over the place on the fresh ice. So much fun.

From there we packed up my car and drove back up to the T Bar for “Jam Night” which was basically an open mic night with a full band setup. In theory, it would have been really cool, but apparently, the main guy who runs it was not there this night, so it was a bit disorganized. Dan brought his drum set, and we had some songs lined up to sing and play (Harper plays a bit of electric guitar, with Dan on drums and me singing) but the highlight of the evening ended up being when we plugged Dan’s iPod into the overhead speakers and he accompanied a little Soulja Boy and Lady Gaga with his drumming magnificence. Definitely a fun night.

I left the bar around 12:30 to begin my drive to Calgary. The drive was really pretty boring. The conditions were great, clear skies, not too much snow left on the roads. The only issue was really fog, which wasn’t terrible, but just patchy in parts. The only thing that really happened was at about 2:30 when I hit a patch of fog and then suddenly saw a VERY large silhouette inside it. I slammed on my brakes and came to a halt about 10 yards from a gigantic female moose. She looked at me and then took off up the mountain to my left, but needless to say, I was a bit more careful looking for wildlife for the rest of the drive.

I got to Calgary about 4:30 and parked outside a Comfort Inn to pick up wifi and check on the carry on allowances at the airport. Unfortunately, the websites for both Continental and the Calgary airport were not exactly accurate. I’m going to type up a separate post detailing exactly what went down, and will provide a link here when I finish that up. Summary story, I ended up having to throw away a bunch of stuff in my laptop bag because I couldn’t take it on to the plane with me. I almost missed my flight out of Calgary, as a result, but didn’t, thankfully. I flew from Calgary to Houston, had a quick layover and then flew to Orlando (yes… opposite of the direction I wanted to go) and then to Los Angeles, finally. The amazing Lauren Rudy picked me up from the airport and we headed straight to Sharkeez in Manhattan Beach for some dinner and a couple beers. I had originally planned on staying up all night tonight to get on Japan time a little early, but I think that since I didn’t sleep last night and only for about 5 hours today, that I’m probably already screwed up enough to avoid jet lag completely. So I am off to bed.
Tomorrow, I head to Okinawa. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. This is going to be a big step for me in terms of culture shock. But I’m ready. Asia, here I come!

XOXO

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A beautiful bluebird Saturday in Panorama

Location: Panorama, British Columbia, Canada

Panorama has to be one of the best kept secrets of the Canadian Rockies. This place is great. I arrived last night late after driving from the airport in Calgary. My flight was uneventful (or rather, I wouldn’t know because I slept through it) and the drive was mostly just annoying. It was snowing rather heavily the entire way (about 300 km) so I spent most of the way stuck behind a semi-truck which continually splashed nasty snow all over my windshield. There was no other option as the only plowed lane was the far right and there was no real way to pass. But it was all worth it, as I was greeted in Pano by Dan and his roommates who were so friendly and eager to get to the bar – which was perfect, because I was as well.
We went to a bar that was about as close to the house as LB Pizza Co (for those who get the reference) and it was great fun to meet all of Dan’s friends (he does a decent job picking them!)

This morning started too early for me, but probably just at the right time. We woke up and strapped on our gear and headed straight to the mountain. It was the most perfect bluebird day for skiing that I think I have ever seen. The temperature was about -8C, the sun was out (not a cloud in the sky) and the mountain got dumped with about 40cm of powder overnight. Some of the big bowls and ridges were closed early morning so we headed down the face for a warm up (HA! If you could call it that). Dan was determined to get up to the ridge (a series of double blacks requiring a short hike and not something I wanted to try first thing in the morning after having not skied in over a year) as soon as we heard they were open but I was determined not to die today, so I forced him to give me some single diamonds (and a trip to the liquor store for some peppermint schnapps) before I tackled the big gun.

But in the end, Dan won. And thank god. I’ve skied ridges on other mountains before, but most of them require at least an hour hike and are rather short. This was neither of those. We hiked for less than 10 minutes before we reached our run but we didn’t go far. The powder was so deep that every other step I was waist deep in fresh goodness. It was fun the first time it happened but when I was suddenly standing on a bank of snow 3 full feet below me, I got a little perturbed. Once we stuck our skies back on, we cruised down and amazing run called B1 and were one of the firsts of the day to do so. There were hardly any treads and it was easy to pave our own way. The powder was fresh and light and the run was littered with trees but not too tightly packed to make me nervous. The best part of this run was that it lasted for a solid hour. We weaved in and out and in and out and crossed over to other runs and back into our little man-made half-pipe. It was beautiful. I was just about to say the best part of this run was… but I realized I already used that line, so I’ll say this was the second best part. I didn’t see another person the entire time. It was just Dan, Julia and I and we made sure we covered the whole area.

As soon as we made it to the bottom though, I felt like I may fall into pieces. I was so exhausted and my body was not exactly pleased with me. So I promised Dan a couple more runs, and then checked off the mountain at about 2:30 and grabbed a bite to eat where Emma works down at the main lodge.

The rest of the evening has been spent lying around doing mostly nothing. We cooked some honey garlic chicken wings for dinner (or rather Amy did) and some mashed potatoes (my contribution) and rice (best recipe I’ve found – thanks Sue Anne!). We had a nice little family dinner and now we’re waiting for Dan to get off work so we can head out to the bars!

XOXO

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