White elephant exchanges...

Wow, been a while since I've updated. Life's been....good! :) Been busy. Saturday the BBC Executive Committee finally got around to our holiday party. Not everyone could be there, but we'd put it off long enough. Heidi and Derek hosted, Megan and Eric brought Anika and lots of fun was to be had by all. Great food too!

Here's Heidi holding her cheerleader statue she won at a bike race. She won a cheerleader statue!!!! For the prizes, the organizers just went to Goodwill and bought a bunch of crap. :)

We did a white elephant gift exchange. We all drew numbers, then chose in turn. Our rule was that something could only be stolen twice...but we really didn't need it. Very little was steal-worthy! Hee hee. Eric was the second one up....Guess what he got? Sex instruction tapes! Three of them!!! Making Sex Fun With Toys and Games; Advanced Sexual Techniques and...one more. I loved every one's expressions. It was priceless, absolutely priceless!!!! Then we got the explanation as to why someone had them in the first place. Turns out Josh and his college roommates pooled their money together and bought them 'cause "Dude, it'd be so cool!" Josh and Cate decided this was the perfect opportunity to get rid of them. Seeing as Meg and Eric are the only ones with a child, one could say that they're the only ones that DON'T need those tapes!!! :)

Then it was my turn. The one I choose I shook...just to make sure that it wasn't more video tapes! Cate informed me that I might not want to do that. Turns out she was right. What I got was a...are you ready for this? A fish. A real fish. Not a fake one to hang on your wall, a real fish along with a bowl, pebbles and food. A female Betta. :) I actually kinda like it...

Here's Matt trying out the talking wreath that I'd brought. I'd got this at New Year's. Hee hee.

Heidi and Brittney cuddling. She just wants to be a big lap dog.

There's my fishie! Haven't named her yet. I'm waiting to see if she'll live longer than a couple days before I invest in a name for her.

Tonight I went to Liisa's annual Oscar party. Since many of the nominations reflected a variety of cultures and countries we went with an international theme. Traditional dress or your Oscar finery. Here's the food table ad Sheila in her traditional Indonesian dress. Sheila's sister-in-law is from Indonesia, and brought this for her last year.

So thus starts a new week...ugh. Next weekend my jewelry show goes up. ULP!!!

Storm's a comin'...

Had a BBC ExCom meeting tonight. We've got a lot of great things lined up for this year, not least of which is that the Sugoi Dirt Series MT Bike Clinic is going to be coming back! I had such a great time last year, learned so much. I encourage everyone to register. It's fabulous!!!!

Went sledding Monday, President's Day, with Heather and Sheila, Chris and Sheila's brother's family. We had a lot of fun. Went up to Wannoga (sp?). Below is the only pic I have of it! My battery was dead, so that's it! :( We had a lot of fun...but I really hurt my wrist. Rode down on my toboggan, went over a jump and landed splat on my wrist. Don't think it's broken, just nicely sprained. I shouldn't be allowed out of the house!!!! Not without being wrapped in bubble wrap. Heather, ahem, could NOT stay on her sled! I think the only time she managed to stay on was when Sheila's niece rode down with her. Hee hee.

Then, the sunset Monday evening was fabulous! There's a storm warning elsewhere in Oregon, but Bend has not been hit hard at all. Bachelor, however, got about 7 inches I heard. Hooray!! Too bad I don't have the time to go up there the next couple weekends. Anyway, Monday evening was very windy, and the sky looked like this:


It was incredibly beautiful!

Stress fractures...

Turns out my shin splints aren't shin splints. They're stress fractures! Two in my left leg and one in my right. Sigh. So....what does this mean? I don't really know yet. Minimum 4 weeks no skating (I can, and should continue swimming and biking), twice daily icing and then stretches and exercises.Massage and PT will also help, but I'll have to see if I can afford it and if it'll fit into my schedule. Sigh.

I have to get serious about healing, or else I may not be able to skate! :( Which would really suck. I love roller derby! For me it really hasn't replaced anything...I love biking as much as ever. But I can do both. I go back to the doc in about two weeks for her to see how they're progressing. If there's no healing she did mention that in extreme cases they do put pins in. She thinks I've had stress fractures before and going into skating so quickly just exacerbated some not fully healed fractures. Anyway...that's where I stand now. No pun intended.


LCRD had a bout with the Olly Rollers from Olympia this last Saturday. Gotta say...they're a really new team, and they played dirty. And we're not really sure that they even know what the rules are! They beat us...but to be honest, they did so because their refs were really green. Poor Snow had an Olly skater jump her...for NO REASON! We watched the tape of the bout and she just came up behind her and tackled her. Really stupid.

Here's Dead Air announcing from the floor, and some young LCRD fans. The All-Star team had some fabulous outfits though! :)

Poor Vertigo was taken out...twice! Nice hematoma she got on her elbow. This is after icing it too!

Avalanche correction...

As has been pointed out to me...I made a slight error. It was NOT an avalanche that closed the highway to Whistler last week. Avalanches involve snow. This one did not. So it was a landslide, mudslide or whatever. Hee hee. Not a big deal, but just wanted to make that correction. I do actually know that...just slipped my mind!

Our "sick" ski trip

And not sick as in great, too good to be true...sick as in...SICK! Julie, Jen and I left Bend early Saturday morning to a beautiful sunrise. We made pretty good time, stopping in Vancouver for a little grocery shopping and dinner. OMG, I almost forgot...the border crossing into Canada was INSANE! The guy in the booth didn't take our passports, he DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT US!!!! :) Man, we could have taken anything we wanted in. He asked if we all lived in the US (not if we were residents), where we were going and that's it! Wow, never had that happen before.

We arrived in Whistler about 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening. My parents had skied that day and were at the cabin to warm it up and shovel the driveway. What we didn't know is that they'd been there pretty much all day. My dad took a tumble on Cockalorum, a double black off the Peak, and gave himself a concussion. This was his very first time skiing with a helmet, and the doctor said he was very lucky to have had one on. Without it he would have been in much more trouble! They left, and we wandered off to bed. By this time Julie was starting to sound not so good. Jen had been feeling a bit rough all the way up too...but little did we know what we in store for us! We got up the next morning bright and early to be on the slopes by 8:30. The cabin is really cute. Quaint and cozy...a typical '70s Whistler cabin. Here we are making breakfast that first day.

The weather was grey and wet. Wet, wet, wet snow...but at least it wasn't windy! By the time we got to the mountain Julie was feeling much worse. We knew that in her condition we were going to be slower. Luckily, Jen ran into another tele skier at the ticket counter, so she had someone to ski with. It all worked out for the best. So this is Julie coming down on one of our warm-up runs. Nice weather! :) But despite the wet snow it was still great.

We stopped for lunch, then continued on until about 3:15. Then we skied all the way down to the village. When I was little, my family used to take the last possible chair as high up as you can go, then ski all the way down. It could take a good hour. Fun! :) Here is the view coming into the village at the end of our first day.

We had an apres ski drink and snack at the Longhorn...which wasn't too impressive. Julie and I were feeling pretty crappy by this point, so Jen stayed in town with Chadwick (the tele skier) and we went back to the cabin. I picked her up around 10:30, then Erica and Wendee arrived at 11:30 or midnight. Oh yea! Almost forgot! That day there had been an avalanche on the highway from Vancouver to Whistler with truck-sized boulders covering the road. This is the only way in or out of Whistler, so we weren't sure that they were going to get through at all. But they finally did.

The next morning, it was obvious that neither Julie nor I were in shape to ski. Erica wasn't either, so Jen and Wendee decided to just go Nordic instead of up the mountain. So this was our first "sick" say in the cabin. While they were out Erica, Julie and I did inspire ourselves to go to the village and wander around. We also found the library and used their Internet. :) What can I say, we're geeks!
We went for sushi that night, but poor Julie was really suffering. I wasn't doing well, but not nearly as bad as her. After dinner the two of us just went back to the cabin and lay down. The next day...we were really sick. Wendee and Jen were still feeling fine, so they went up Blackcomb. The rest of us...slept all day. I fell asleep for about 4 hours...which anyone who knows me can attest is very unusual! I needed it though. By the time they got back, Wendee was obviously sick. We hauled ourselves to the Whistler sports center and went to the hot tub and saunas. Mmmmm, that was really nice. We then made some soup...and crashed. How sad.

The next day Erica, Julie and I were feeling much better, but nowhere near 100%. Wendee was really sick by now. LOL, what a ski vacation! :) Poor Jen was going crazy! Here she was on a ski trip, the only healthy one, while all we wanted to do was sleep! I hope she had a somewhat good time though! So anyway, Wendee was forbidden to do anything. Jen decided to Nordic again and so the three of us went up Whistler. Another grey, wet day. But we had some good skiing. It was fun! Here's Julie and Erica getting all strapped in.

That evening we all went out into the village one more time. This trip did NOT turn out like I wanted. I brought a bunch of cute stuff to wear out the clubs. I mean, it was WinterPRIDE in Whistler!!!! But it didn't turn out that way. We wandered around, shopped and just looked to see what we could see. Erica just HAD to ring the cow's bell...but it had no clapper! :(

The lights were just beautiful. Maybe we can try again next year and NOT BE SICK!!!

And the next morning it was back to Bend for Julie and I. We coughed and hacked our way down to Vancouver, stopped at my parent's house for me to pick up some stuff and then continued on down to Bend, arriving at about 7:00. Jen, Erica and Wendee stayed at Whistler one more night, and then went to Vancouver for a day or two. They should be arriving back here today.

And poor Jen was starting to get sick just as Julie and I were leaving...oops! :) So that was our trip. Not fabulous...but memorable. Still glad we went...but I hope we can do it again with better results!

Hello from Whistler!

Hello. Having a great time here...I love it. Skied all day yesterday, taking today off. I know that I can't downhill every day...my legs just won't take it. Actually, none of us went up today! Erica and Wendee got in at almost midnight last night. There was an avalanche on the highway to Whistler that closed it off for most of the day. We weren't sure they were even going to be able to get here at all. Evidently there is something that closed the highway today too.

Maybe I won't be "able" to get home.....

And what's made this trip even better is that I found out it's WinterPRIDE at Whistler Feb 4-11! LOL this is going to be SUCH FUN!!! :) :) :) Man, I'm so looking forward to being away for a bit. I'll bring back lots of pics, I promise.

Busy week, busy weekend

Been a busy week...but nothing exciting to report! :) Had the monthly Bend Bella Cyclist meeting last night, but couldn't stay. HDC was having a Just Deserts Volunteer party at the same time. Since I'm a Board member thought I should be there for a portion of it anyway. I left early though to pack, 'cause...

I'M OFF TO WHISTLER! Well, we leave tomorrow morning, but I need to be completely packed tonight. We're heading out of Bend by about 7:30. Eight hours to Vancouver, stop to shop and have dinner, then another 1.5-2 hours to Whistler!!!! HOORAY! We're going to have a rockin' good time.

:) :) :)