Board in Tahoe

We didn't take a camera on the mountain, so here are some post - boarding shots...

It snowed 15" the day before I arrived, so the powder was nice.

I'm covered in snow because of the snowball fight shown below, not because of the serious wipeout I had on the mountain. :)

Getting pegged with a snowball...

Revenge...

Tofurky on the Beach

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Monterey, California with BJ and his family. The beaches were white, the weather perfect... Thursday morning we went to Pebble beach... here are a couple pics of the beauty. This pic (above) is just a little boy playing with his dog... I have serious dog envy!
I believe these are sandpipers...

BJ and I

The girls playing croquet... a tradition you could only observe in CCC (central calif coast)

Charlie (BJ's BFF) showing Eric what's up (actually what's down)

Samson (BJ's nephew)

I want a Jellyfish aquarium in my house! Friday, we went to the Aquarium... The only thing new since I was last there is the Great White Shark, which I attempted to photograph here. The GW wasn't that great (only 6 feet or so) but it did have the scary Jaws look to it.

Friday's sunset on Pebble Beach

Full moon... can you see the white Crane on the rocks?

Saturday - We went to Big Sur and hiked a little. Some random woman asked if she could take our picture in this tree, so search blogs everywhere for this same photo...

Big Sur View
After our hike, we went to a hippie crafts fair and met some bonafide hippies selling homemade treasures... including Holy Bowls

Waterfall in Big Sur

Serious tree-huggers :) BJ was annoyed that I made him take this pic...

Happy Happy to me

Celebrated with really good mexican food, cake and some great theatre...

Frosting Face...

from my rockin' spidey birthday cake...

...with way too many candles

Brusasco as Arial... not only eye candy, a phenomenal actor, but does a mean bird impression.

Mindy, Angie and Liz's Ariel impersination...

I get this living room in my house! I have to wait 'til January when the run is over... but it'll be worth the wait... I believe the set will go perfectly with my Eames chair.

MLO impression... yes Mark Light Orr in a toga doing ballet... one of the best images ever.

Fam Dam

Annual Tingey Family Reunion at Lake Tahoe

I think Wil looks like Em in this picture... He's getting so big! At the airport I got the essential run into my arms. And then he said that he missed me. We had fun... played on the beach, caught crawdads (that I refused to touch) went on a bike ride, ate pizza at MoFos...

Look at the T-shirt... "Jackson Hole, Wy" Well this is Jackson Hohl, my cousin's son... which makes him my cousin once removed. He goes by Henry (check out his blog). He is a cutie, and knows sign language.

We went on a family bike-ride along the truckee river... perfect weather... good times

honestly... I just think my hair looks good in this pic... zoom in and check it out ;)

Linda and Gary from Napa. Linda's my great aunt's daughter. Check out the gas prices in Tahoe!
The Fam!

Tony and Shelly and I went up my trail early in the morning. It was a perfect morning... the Truckee meadows were covered in fog... a low cloud. It was beautiful!! A couple days later Annie (see below) and I went up in the evening. I think it I like mornings best.

My mountain

This is why...

About 3 or 4 times a week, I go on this hike after work. I can get to the summit and back before dark (sometimes). I found out the forest starts to get really black after 7:30... I haven't run into any bears yet. Anyway, it was suggested that I blog this part of my life. So, on Friday I took my camera. It snowed, of course, but I think it just makes it more beautiful.

This is the path, which, bytheway, is a nice mtn bike path as well...

Typical view on the way up... it's about 3 miles.

This is my meditation rock. I'm usually the only one up there... I clear my head on the way up, and talk to God when I get there.

Big Blue Adventure

So, I did this race yesterday called the Big Blue Adventure. Truly an adventure, the race included kayaking, running, and a wicked mountain bike course. This was a team event (we were team Pink Insomnia) that included following a map and other special tasks.

oh yeah... and an insane rainstorm to make it really interesting.

My personal photographer (mom) took a million pictures, so you have a play by play.

You can see the raindrops on the lake... we were waiting for the start. Fortunately the water was pretty calm. A few hours earlier there were big waves. I was excited for the kayaking portion... until we got in the rubber rafts! Yeah... rubber rafts.

So any experience in a real kayak is obsolete in a rubber raft. I understand why they had us all use the same boat, but this was insanely frustrating.

I thought kayaking would be one of our strengths, but we came out of the water at the end of the group. I had to resign myself to the fact that we might be last place. However, we were super quick in the transition area, and passed a couple teams there.

First transition - completely soaking wet - 40 degrees! Fun

We had to run from the beach to the highway to a trail to our bikes.
These shots are taken from the car as they passed us. Unfortunately, they couldn't get too many shots of us on the trails or off road. Also, we had to carry all our gear with us on every leg of the race, so extra shoes, bike pump, patch kit, helmets, water, food etc...

Second transition area. We had to check in and get our map signed.

The night before, we had to leave our bikes at the staging area. I covered my seat, but the bikes got the full effects of the storm. I didn't realize how much the water effected it, until I started climbing the hills. My gears were unhappy. Next time I have to bring goo... yes it was so fun... there will be a next time.

This is the beginning of the bike section. This shows the 100 yards of paved path before the 10 plus miles of real trail started. This was a pretty technical course... lots of single tracks, steep climbs, barriers (like fallen trees), puddles and mud from the storm. I had some near misses, but I thankfully didn't fully wipe out.

3rd transition. Midway through the bike course, there was a guy that we had to check in w/. He was sitting under a big umbrella and obviously cold. If you followed the trail or map incorrectly, you could miss him and get ranked lower for not completing the course.

This is happy Liz realizing we passed about 6 teams on the mountain!

Then we get to run again. According to the map, we saw that we were headed toward the beach and finish line. I was concerned because we had one more check point...

So we run another couple miles, and we meet this guy who gives us our first challenge. Find a special bridge and bring back info that is posted on a sign near the bridge. Fortunately, I'm a Tahoe native, so I got us there with out any unnecessary detours.

We thought this was really the end, but we were told we had to go back in the "kayaks" aka inflatable rafts. WE were not happy b/c there were teams close behind us, and we really struggled with these boats. However...

... we totally rocked the second kayak leg.

Yeah!!! We finished!

We met our goals... we finished and we weren't last!

Mom and Dad stayed for the duration of the four hour race!