Snowy cabin trip...more later

First ski day of the season!!!

So the coolest thing about this trip was everything except gas was FREE...oh, and I'm kinda gonna get paid for it!

I've been doing some travel pieces freelance for our magazine. So places I was gonna go anyway, just snap a few picks get a little more info and bing bang boom, payday!

I had a free ticket to China Peak (yes, it's no longer Sierra Summit, the long national nightmare is over!) and then mom gave me a voucher for a free night at Best Western in Fresno. Sooooo cool!

I went last Thursday, Dec. 16 and was going to ski Dec. 17 as well since I had another free ticket, but it was too stormy and I am too wimpy so I visited w/dad and others and headed home Friday.

So here was my wonderful wonderful ski day! The snow was excellent as was the weather.

This is from the top of the mountain, Chinese Peak, looking back at the valley. Yuck, I drove up through that and was so glad to see blue skies and sun!

Beautiful Huntington Lake from the top of Chair 1. I'd love to own a cabin someday on this lake. Gotta keep playing that lotto I guess!

The top of Chair 1. It was just so glorious!
The chair to the summit wasn't open, but that's OK, I can't ski that thick stuff anyway.
Boarder, shreddin' the gnar, dude...

The lodge.
Inside of the east lodge, called Mainstream, which has lots of improvements for families this year.

This is Tim Cohee, the new owner. He and some buddies who are silent partners bought China Peak last year from Snow Summit. He worked for Snow Summit back in the 80s and was one of the principle people behind the name change from China Peak to Sierra Summit.

As he told me, China Peak was a dump back then, pretty run down and they wanted a new name to disassociate any bad vibes people might have for it (there was a big legal bruhaha back then as well over the attorney in charge of the estate of the original owner, but that's another story). AND he said, they thought they could lure SoCal skiers who knew Snow Summit up by calling it Sierra Summit.

Didn't work. So 27 years later, he bought the place and changed the name back. Nice guy, took a lot of time out of his day to show me around.
End of the day. And lemme tell ya, the temperature dropped FAST.

Whoops just found more Rock to Pier photos from July

Cleaning out files at work

And came across these photos.

This is me doing a story on an elderly woman (holding the ladder for me) whose house was burned up by PG&E and then they refused to help her file a claim for more than 7 months, effectively making her homeless when the fire was THEIR FAULT!

Anyhoo, after my first story. PG&E settled, for a pittance, mostly because the woman, Barbara Ray, was so ungreedy she only asked for replacement value of whatever was absolutely unusable, even keeping her old fridge that had been scorched on the outside because, "Well, it still runs good."

So, she found a contractor, Jimmy Miller (standing next to her on the ground) who basically did everything for cost and got all his subs to lower their prices too.

I went out to do a folo story and when I wanted to interview Jimmy who was on the roof, he wouldn't come down, so I went up. Then, as you see in the photo, I had to scramble back down in my high heels and skirt. What I go through for a story! I tell you!


This next one was a story on wind energy. So we went out to find the wind, and we did!
This was from the summer, I think. Wilkie, in the plaid shirt, is famous for flipping off any camera that may be pointed in his direction. So me and Robin (the finger to the left) got the drop on him!
And this is a very sad photo taken in March 2009 when we had massive layoffs....after the layoffs that Christmas. Many of the people in this photo were no longer here after this day. Including the goof who's photoshopped in because he couldn't be bothered to make the photo shoot that day!

Thanksgiving 2010

We stayed at Asilomar on the Monterey penninsula again this year. It's gorgeous there and we had great weather. I never took a shot of the actual buildings, I got this off their site...very historic and cool...but the rooms are...um hisstoric, you know...


The family that texts together...

Ahhhh! the COMMON ROOM! This was a constant fight because other families were always trying to take it over. Course we won!

Ali showing off her fab new bracelet.

Its ahrd to see but this is Jake surfing.

Our hike from Asilomar to Monterey.

Goober dude taking photos of his "hot" ride...lame!

Wilkie! That guy gets around!!!

Bearutiful asilomar sunset!

Robert played piano in the social hall and this was the only shot I got of the whole family.

Then a nice lady came and played a great duet with Robert.

Well, then sometimes we didn't win the battle of the common room and ended up in Dave and Melanie's room.

Funny rock!