Lake Tahoe

My division in my company had a relaxing off-site to Lake Tahoe from Wednesday, August 31, 2011, through Friday, September 2. We had a nearly-identical off-site the previous year. Indeed, all the meals were at similar places at similar times. The activity schedule was basically identical. The only difference on my end was that this time I stayed in one of the hotel's townhouses on the beach rather than in the high-rise hotel building across the street. Also, we didn't have a puzzlehunt this year.

It was a fun trip. I played a lot of games (Through the Desert, Dominion, Ticket to Ride). For the main activity on Thursday (the one whole day we were there), I went hiking. I also tossed a disc on the beach as well as relaxed and read in the sun.

I took pictures from the beach on Wednesday.

I also took pictures of the hike on Thursday. As you can tell from the picture captions, I was hiking with some people (both coworkers and tour guides) knowledgeable about botany. For the hike, we took a chartered bus, parked by Spooner Lake, and hiked to Marlette Lake and back. It was 9.5 miles roundtrip. It was nice except for the clouds of dust kicked up by many dozens of people walking. I took a shower upon my return.

Lake Tahoe

I spent Wednesday, August 25, 2010, through Friday, August 27, on a relaxing company trip to Lake Tahoe. I'd never been to Lake Tahoe during the summer before.

The trip reminded me of my company's Hawaii trip, perhaps because we stayed in a resort along a beautiful beach. Lake Tahoe is pretty, like parts of Yosemite, definitely prettier than I imagined.

On Wednesday, the bus I rode on the way to Lake Tahoe broke down on the way up, but we got rescued quickly by another bus.

Dinner that evening was on a lawn near the beach. Yay, smores!

On Thursday, I helped run a small puzzlehunt for my coworkers. (Note that I didn't say short; no puzzlehunt is ever as short as advertised. We knew ours would run longer than we promised, so we warned everyone about the realistic timing.) I designed two of the six puzzles and staffed the site with my most difficult puzzle so I could help teams as they struggled.

The puzzlehunt went well. We got a lot of positive feedback and the clue I developed was the hardest in the hunt but also the favorite. (I think people enjoyed it because it referenced a lot of internal company knowledge, often in a funny/punny way.) I'm proud of the experience we provided.

We had a bbq lunch in the early afternoon, again at the same place near the beach. I loved the dessert, a great strawberry shortcake. Okay, well it wasn't strictly speaking strawberry shortcake--it was pound cake with whipped cream (vanilla or passion fruit flavored) and a mixed berry compote.

After lunch, I went wading in the lake and also threw around a disc for a while on the beach. This caused me to get really dusty. I was outside so much (the afternoon on the beach and the morning on a totally exposed field manning my puzzle) that I thought I might have gotten burned through my shirt. Luckily, I didn't, and I wore sunscreen everywhere else.

Dinner was at a banquet near the resort's pool. During dinner, inspired by a puzzle clue (that I didn't write), I tried a lemon drop drink and liked it. After dinner, I also discovered that my boss's boss makes good margaritas (or whatever it was that we was mixing).

Given my crowd of friends and coworkers, I mostly played games after dinner, mainly Dominion and Liar's Dice. I also played games the previous evening.

Over this trip, I met some new coworkers and bonded with some old ones. Overall, I had a good time and left feeling very relaxed and refreshed.

Sorry, I don't have pictures to share. (The only pictures I took were of teams solving my puzzle, and neither are of general interest nor give a general impression of setting.)

The Displeasure of the Snow Gods

I was in Tahoe the weekend of April 1st and 2nd, and a sequence of events made me think the snow gods were frowning on us.

The first incident was daylight savings time. Saturday night we realized we lost an hour of sleep. While this made us sad, we didn't change our planned schedule. We set two alarms on our cell phones for around 8:00am, planning to get to the slopes by 8:30am or at least 9:00am. One person's alarm went off on time and he turned it off without telling us. My alarm -set for a few minutes after eight- went off. I looked at it, pressed the button to acknowledge it, and after I did so, my phone changed the time to 9-something. Apparently it only changed the time to reflect daylight savings after a user event. grrr... The lifts were running, and all of us were still in our beds.

En route to Sugar Bowl, we stopped at a store to rent quality snowboards. But they didn't have good quality snowboards. And worse, my car got stuck in the snow and ice outside the store. Luckily I was with two people who grew up in the northeast and dealt with these issues frequently. So after some gunning the engine, pushing, rotating tires, and rocking the car, we got free. Well, free but further delayed.

Finally, we headed to a different rental spot the previous shopkeepers said had performance snowboards. As we filled out forms and went to rent, we found the store was out of boots in the size one person needed. We gave up and rather than rent separately decided to rent at Sugar Bowl itself.

Incidentally, on Saturday we also arrived at the slopes late. The weather was slightly inclement so CalTrans was putting in delays to spread out traffic. And since the highway was closed the previous night due to a heavy storm, a lot of people were coming up Saturday morning like us.

I have at least one friend who will blame our bad luck on the fact that we were snowboarding. But whatever the cause, it was a series of unfortunate events.

Still, the trip was great! Very few lift lines. And lots of powder -- great for snowboarding (which is what I chose to do). Tumbles didn't hurt. And the powder is forgiving, letting you make mistakes without falling. And it kept flurrying on and off during the day, which kept the powder fairly fresh in most places. I was surprised how comfortable I was: with a face mask, a down jacket (rather than my usual thin skiing jacket), goggles, and good gloves, I was entirely warm and happy the whole day. At the end of one day I just sat in the snow, laid back and watched the clouds and the lake, and felt very at peace.