This is another skiing weekend for me at North Lake Tahoe (Squaw Valley Ski Resort). We had to pack up early once again today due to bad conditions. The resort hasn’t received much snowfall in the past few days, and the ice layers were starting to expose themselves. There is such a thing as the right amount of fresh snow to enjoy skiing : plenty of fresh snow tends to be hostile (causing falls such as these) and very little fresh snow exposes icy layers which lead to less friction. Friction is what skiing is all about — that’s how one controls the speed.  It wasn’t fun today, so we called it a day. There is a snowstorm outside our hotel room, and we’re hoping the resort is receiving this. Tomorrow might be a nicer day to ski. If not, we’ll have to shift to ice-skating for tomorrow.

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We got a ridiculously cheap deal at a 3 1/2 star casino/resort at Reno. If you’ve ever been to the Las Vegas airport, the whole hotel looks like it with the flashing machines that are supposed to attract people walking by. Whatever.

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They say that Reno is the Las Vegas of the elderly. They’re right.

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Most of the world isn’t bothered about the Winter Olympics. We’re surrounded by skiing resorts, so all televisions in common areas are telecasting the NBC coverage. I’ll admit — I didn’t follow them until now, but a few seconds and I was hooked. Since I spend much time on the snow slopes, I could identify more with the Winter Olympics than I ever did with the Summer games. I saw a few events and it left me humbled — I’ll think twice before calling myself a skier in the future. I’ll try and follow the rest of the games, increasing the NBC viewers to 2.

I claim to ski down ‘expert only slopes’, but I hardly ski elegantly down the toughest slopes. The technique is fine, but elegance and ease are lacking. This is still great progress for someone who learnt skiing a year back, but that doesn’t help at all. I know there is a world of improvement possible.

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