The Ski trip: a lil bit of everything
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Edit 1: Touched up photos added to the new "Recent" gallery, makes navigation much easier.
Edit 2: *All* (74) photos from the trip are here.
Where does one start writing about a trip that offered so much excitement in its planning stages and managed to live up to or dare I say it, surpass, expectations in its execution. But as goes a popular phrase in Hindi, "shuru sey shuru karte hai".
March 11, 9:30 pm
After much deliberation, and deciding which state to go to let alone which ski town our party of 5 including me, Shiraz, Vivek, Payal and Sugandha (Sugs) left West Lafayette in Payal's Honda Civic. Destination: Camp 10 Ski and Snowboard, Rhinelander, Wisconsin (500+ miles, 7+ hour drive). The weather in Lafayette was just perfect that day (shorts wearing perfect :D) but towards the night a major thunderstorm was heading towards us. We "missed" the storm by just a matter of 10 minutes and were duly informed by the very monotone voice of the emergency weather announcement guy on all local radio channels. By missing I mean we didn’t catch it in W. Lafayette. As we headed towards Chicago, we were treated to brilliant displays of lightning over vast stretches of open Indiana farmland. Soon the storm caught up with us and literally pounded us with water. At times it felt like we were driving through a continuous water body instead of rain.
March 12, about midnight
Leaving the thunderstorm behind and driving towards Wisconsin, we ran into some dense fog, reducing visibility to almost nil. At this point the conversation in the car was heading towards the supernatural (the whole setting just begged for it). The girls were slightly freaked by the situation and thanks to a theme song that fit "bhatakti aatma" to the 'T' that we had playing in the car, the hair on their back of the necks had to be gelled down :). Nonetheless, this weather phenomenon too passed and we encountered no more obstacles on our journey and were speeding through dark empty highways. However, I did get Vivek to stop for just a moment to take a photo of the bright moon that provided abundant moonlight. Clear skies kept us company all the way to Rhinelander.
March 12, 5 am
We finally reached our hotel, Holiday Inn Express, and all five of us being 'poor' college students checked into one room with an extra bed. It wasn't bad at all, the lobby had a nice fireplace, they offered free (but very delicious) breakfast, the rooms were big enough for all five of us, a TV for crappy entertainment and best of all free internet (yes, a geek can’t be repaired). At this point in time, we basically just crashed for the precious few hours we would get before leaving for the ski area.
March 12, 11 am
Having had breakfast and some of us still sleepy eyed, we lounged in the hotel room for while, Shiraz was busy finding where the heck were we in the vast (not) hotel while Vivek was doing his best impression of a very cheap hooker :P. We did finally leave for the ski slope and were met by some pretty good scenery. Now until this point most of us expected this to be slightly run down or extremely shallow type slope given the money they asked compared to other ski slopes we looked up on the net. But lo behold, Camp 10 was actually pretty good, steep looking slope. We didn’t actually have a comparison since all of us were beginners but for some reason we weren’t expecting what we saw, in a good way.
Camp 10 didn’t take credit cards so we paper-challenged students had to run back to the town to an ATM, where for some reason mine and Shiraz's card wouldn’t work. Vivek ended up paying for us. One of the best things that we did at the camp was hire a private instructor for an hour of lesson. Later a consensus was to be reached that without his help we would be sitting helplessly in the snow. The instructor whose name was Bob, helped us put on our skis, taught us how to stand (not as easy on a slope as one might think), side step up a ski slope, how to brake, how to brake in an emergency (basically just drop) among other things that I cant be bothered to write about :P. After all that we were ready as could be and the skiing was to begin. Woohoooo. The pictures can do the talking for a while now.
A small tragedy did befall Payal as we were being taught the "go sideways on a steep slope" (which I sucked at) technique. She fell the wrong way and ended up badly spraining her knee and was out of action as a result. We wrapped up soon after.
Out of all of us Shiraz caught on the skiing techniques pretty quickly (unknown to me he didn’t wipe out even once, I could’ve arranged for that to happen "accidentally" *evil laugh*), so did I and Vivek but the girls had a tough time grasping the techniques. They kept tumbling over but that’s not to say that they didn’t have fun doing it :).
March 12, 5 pm
Tired but not out, we reluctantly left the ski camp. Our next priority was food and on our way to Rhinelander "downtown", which btw was the whitest town I had ever seen in USA; no blacks, no hispanics, nothing and a population of a mere 7000, I noticed something that was just, how do I describe it, "WOAH!" and so was the reaction from the rest of the party.
Yes, a freaking Tank!
After the uber-necessary photo-session we gorged on pizzas at Pizza Hut and headed back to the hotel for a good nights rest.
March 13, morning
Time to leave and God decided to throw down one last test. A major snowstorm had hit the state of Wisconsin overnight and there was up to 8 inches of snow on the road. The bad news was Payal's car was slightly old and didn’t have traction control but fortunately for us we had an experienced driver in Vivek who concentrated just that much harder on the road to get us out of the storm as safe as possible. The car did act up a little bit by skidding here and there but we managed to pull it out without much damage or delay. As we headed back south to Lafayette, snow turned to water and then finally to just cloudy skies.
However it isn’t over till the fat lady sings, but for us it was just a highway patrol officer writing a speeding ticket to Vivek who couldn’t control himself on seeing dry roads and compensating for the 30mph drive for 50 miles under snowy and icy conditions.
But as they say all's well that ends well and this was definitely well and good. Payal had to be taken to the hospital for a checkup but there seems to be no complications so she should be fine within a couple of days.
And here I am sitting 3.30 am in the morning doing the dutiful. Wow my longest self-written post ever, I think. I shall be expecting cookies in my mail ;).
at 03:40
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Love the pictures!
I like how you linked words to them.. very nice :)
Man, if I ever went skiing, I'd fall off at once, being so darn clumsy. So good for you.
i agree w/ danu, great pics...looks like a lotta fun man!! good thing u finally got outta WL...more pics?
Nice! Looks like you guys had a blast...
And you guys got to see snow on your spring break! Waah! But I'm guessing it snows a fair bit in IN anyway?
Hemlyn: Yes is does snow here too...we were actually going crazy over the fact that we chose a winter activity on spring break...ppl usually go down south and we desis went north :P...but w/e it was fun :D
everybody: thanks!
Amazing pics, especially the last one with the water... I should go skiing and "accidentaly" shove one of the party off the slope. Maybe they will make a soap out of this, and i will be rich then
lovely pics dear I always love to see lot of snow but not really going on it remember our trip to manali liitle boy (still u r)I miss the yak ride there after seeing ur pics i think i can try skiing
love phoopi