Life of Thadii.

The Sun, the Snow, and the Ski
Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Wheee, many milestones in the last 3 days of the long weekend holiday (Martin Luther King). Let me summarize them in short before I start attempting to recount one of the most fantastic episode of my life. (Which is pretty long too...you've been warned!)

1. Drove left-hand drive continuously for 6 hours at an average of 90 to 110mph (1mile=1.6km, speed limit = 55-65mph, go figure how much I was speeding!) on the Interstate.

2. Experienced and played with snow! (I know I'm ill-traveled...)

3. Snowboarded and skied for the first time in my life!

4. Drove in snow...it isn't easy at all...had a near-crash incident...

5. Camaraderie and friendship =)

Ok so the long journey started at an unearthly hour of Saturday morning, 5.30am. Destination: North Carolina. I was the slated driver, with Alan being the backup. Anyway, here's some nice pics of the journey when we first started.

We took a pitstop at Chesnee for gas and breakfast. Believe it or not, it's the first time I've eaten Mac's in America. Their muffins are interestingly called, "biscuits", and taste really superb. It's like fried bread but more oily, delicious, and thicker.

The drive to North Carolina took about 5hours, and we headed for Sugar Mountains to ski. However, the crowd there was massive and the cold thwarted us. Realizing that most of us were ill-equipped for skiing, we headed down to Walmart for cheap buys for ski clothes. With a 25USD budget, everybody managed to procure good pants and jackets for skiing. Walmart is simply awesome for cheap and good stuff!

Then the real stuff began...skiing! But first we had to check into our resort lodging.

It's a quaint little cabin resort called Willow Valley located high up in the mountains. Getting there was a challenge due to our screwey GPS. It brought us up impossible slopes in the mountain and I went up inclines as steep as about 40 degrees!

It was the first time I really had to change to the lowest gear in an auto car and jam down on the accelerator just to get up! Friggin scary! And the worst part was when we realized it was a dead end at the top of the steep slope, and had to reverse back down...freaking scary! The experience is something words just cannot describe...literally at the edge of my seat, grabbing the wheels as much as I can, trying to counter-steer and control the wheels, while pressing down on the brakes for our dear lives...

I dare say my driving skill has improved tremendously after this trip. It's really hard to describe the perils of driving in America sometimes. I had monster trailiers swerving into my fast lane at 90mph without any signal warning; I lost control of my vehicle on the way back on the 3rd day and almost crashed; I drove into a shallow ditch and had a hard time reversing out...drive in America at your own peril!

Oh a word of advice for fellow friends coming to America soon for exchange, although I was a real speed demon, emulate me at your own risk. Along the way I saw MANY vehicles caught by the police/sheriff for speeding. I was just EXTREMELY lucky to escape these speed-gun ambushes. Don't ever think you can outrun their police vehicles...it's not possible lol.

Anyway, snow makes driving a hazard. I experienced extreme counter-steering and had to wrestle hard with the wheel just to gain control. The wheels can literally swing to the right even when my steering wheel is fully-locked at left! That's when you know you're screwed and have to jam the brakes (lightly!). Lane markings vanished, covered by the snow. Ditches too became invisible. Go slow in snow people, trust me!

Anyway, we eventually found our way to the lodge. Here's some pretty views of the mountain from our lodge on the first day before the snow fell.

Note the white in some of the pictures...those are frozen ponds!

Seeking advice from the locals, we decided to head to the Appalachian instead of Sugar Mountains, as Appalachian was a lot easier for beginner skiiers. I decided to be a daredevil, and try snowboarding instead of skiing. Along with Cedric, Alan, Angeline, and Justin, we took a "twilight hours" package and braved the slopes and started falling like idiots all over, our feet stuck to a snowboard. It was hilarious.

It is insanely difficult to snowboard and learning how to control it was a tall order. Lots of falls were involved and I think all of us ended up with really sore muscles. But eventually Alan, Cedric and myself got the hang of snowboarding. At the very least, we managed to board down the beginner slopes without falling.

And boy it was awesome! The adrenaline rush! There's no easy way to learning snowboarding except falling and falling.

Now I would LOVE to show you guys pictures of the skiing and snowboarding, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera in because I was snowboarding and didn't want to smash my camera. Some of my fellow friends did though, and the ski pictures are all with them. I'll upload them ASAP once I get it. All I have is this ticket left behind from the 2nd day of skiing that I'll be holding on to as a keepsake.

Here's some R&R in our resort at the end of the first day.

Yes note the copious amounts of beer we had. It keeps you warm and sane in the cold weather, and is awesome for helping recuperate our tired bodies from snow sports =P

BTW, America is awesome, besides the good food, friendly people, cheap cars, etc, I've found another advantage. You don't need a fridge in winter. Just place your beer out in the cold for about 15minutes and you get nice, chilled beer!

This is one of my favorite pictures that I took in the morning of the 2nd day.

Anyway it started snowing on the first night and from then on everything became really awesome. We did a 2nd bout of skiing/snowboarding the next day AND night for a whole 8 hours, had really delicious Greek food (Gyro and Greek Fries, go wiki, it's late and I'm tired haha!), and more or less, mastered the basics of skiing and snowboarding! Yay!

It's really thrilling when one zooms down the slopes, and even more satifying when one can come to a proper stop without stumbling along the way =)

I guess we were too crazy-high after the 2nd night of snowsports, and we ended up doing a snowball fight at the carpark of Appalachian Ski Resort after it closed! You can see how thick the snow is anyway at this point in time...

and it got even thicker when we got down the mountain to get dinner/supper!

No prizes for guessing what we did that night too! (Besides the drinking, cooking, and camaraderie chat...)

Somehow this GIP doesn't feel like a study trip but an extended holiday. I think none of us have done our tutorials/readings yet and possibly pretty screwed...but oh well, S/U rocks! We left early in the morning of the 3rd day, heading back to Atlanta. It was a really surreal feeling of return.

To add to the feeling of the "holiday", we stopped by a factory outlet and shopped. Here's my purchases for the day, coming up to about 120USD for a pair of CK Jeans (27usd), a CK belt (29USD) and shirt (23USD), RL Polo tee (22USD), and TH tee (15USD). Talk about cheap haha...I'm definitely gonna buy more labels! I love the CK shirt (electric blue rules), and the RL polo has a really unique/rare green that convinced me to get it (I'm normally not a huge RL fan).

Well dear friends, some of you might have remembered that I kept mentioning about buying CK boxers when I came to America...well I didn't manage to this shopping trip, because the only one boxer design that I thought was nice, Alan wanted too. Buying the same boxers would be too gay so I guess that will have to wait for the next CK factory outlet!

Now I pray that my brother doesn't blow up when he sees the credit card bill...besides the shopping that is...the car rental (about 200usd for 3 days) was charged to his card too >< I'll pay him back when I return lol...

Time to sleep...it's 3.16am and there's class tomorrow...but I had to blog this wonderful journey before I head to dreamland...I'm really tired but thank goodness my professor cancelled the 9.35am class due to Obama's inauguration...guess that's the one good thing he has done so far for me...that lousy, full-of-fluff liberal Democrat...

P.S. sorry for the dearth of photos...I'll try to remember that I have a camera...

One of the Thadii blogged at 2:37 PM.
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