Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Great Snowboarding Debacle

Today we took a radio bus trip to Sugarbowl to go boarding. We chose to go on the trip because the ticket price was $30 rather than the $51 it would cost at the mountain. I thought it would be a cheap opportunity to check out a new mountain, but it turned out to be a disaster.
First of all, we had to be in Sacramento at 6:30am on a Sunday!
Secondly, we could only buy 2 bus tickets rather than 3 because we didn't want to stay the whole day. Therefore, my Dad followed us up.
On the way up I-80 it was so snowy that I don't think we broke 30 mph, so it took 3 hours to get there. On top of that, most of the people on the bus apparently went on the trip to have someone else drive because they were drinking beers and passing bottles the whole trip up. Did I mention that we left at 6:30 am?
Miraculously, I managed to sleep a fair amount of the trip up, but David was not able to and by the time we got to the resort he was a big time grumpy bunny from being surrounded by drunken idiots for 3 hrs. (As a side note, David is also cranky because he has realized that he forgot to wear his long johns and it is a very cold, windy and snowy day. I sort of manage to pull him out of the funk by graciously offering him my sweat pants.)
Once we arrive at the resort, we hike to the lodge and call my Dad to meet us.
As we open our bag of apparel, I quickly realize that I forgot my ski pants (I am only wearing the sweats that I promised to David) Being unwilling to go buy a new pair which run $65 and up in the ski shop, I am now unable to snowboard. Some of you may say, "Hey, suck it up and get out there". To those people I say "Heck no". The minute my bootie would of hit the snowy ski lift, I would have been wet and freezing (It is blizzarding out).
I have to blame Jon for contributing to my forgetfulness. He stayed on our couch last night and was still up when we got up at 5, so as soon as I hit the bathroom, he had me chatting rather than remembering my ski pants in the bedroom. I'm just kidding about blaming him, but he did help distract me.
Getting back to the story, we bought David long johns and he and my father hit the slopes.
I sat in the lodge with nothing to do....for several hours.
Even though the roads were clear, it still took an additional hour and a half to get home at the end of the day.

Additional notes:
-My Dad's $51 lift ticket ended up being $66! (I misunderstood the information on the website)
-Even though I didn't snowboard, it was so windy that I still got wind burn on my face from walking to and from the car.

Pros from the day:
-I did manage to sell my lift ticket to someone in the lift line for $20, so at least I recouped some of my money. I don't think this makes me a scalper because I think you have to make a profit to be scalping.

-I got to relax and people watch for a few hours.

Overall lesson:
-Think twice before signing up for another radio station bus trip and if you do, then definitely don't forget your gear at home!

1 comment:

  1. Wow! That whole experience sounds totally crazy and super lame! What a bummer you had to go all the way up there to end up not even snowboarding anyway! Did they have good chili????

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