Angela and Bree use our Amazon Echo device in the kitchen on a daily basis, mostly to 1) set a timer for something, or 2) to add something to the shopping list. This morning both of them struggle with the Alexa voice software to add an unusual product to the shopping list: frozen Japanese onigiri (triangular lumps of grilled rice brushed with soy sauce). They try:
Angela: “Alexa, add onigiri to the shopping list.”
Alexa: “I’ve added ‘O.G’. to the shopping list.”
Angela: “Alexa, add rice balls to the shopping list.”
Alexa: “I’ve added ‘rice’ to the shopping list.”
Angela: “Alexa, add rice… triangles to the shopping list.”
Alexa: “I’ve added ‘rice triangles’ to the shopping list.”
Close enough.
Jan’s friend Brian takes him out to dinner — by boat. Our Madison Park neighborhood is just a few minutes walk from Lake Washington, so Brian drives his boat over to the public dock and meets Jan at 5:00 pm. It’s an unseasonably sunny and warm day for a boat ride. Brian and Jan slowly motor through the Lake Washington ship canal, passing through Lake Union and eventually to Fishermen’s Terminal. They tie up in front of Chinook’s, a popular seafood restaurant, just after 6:00. Brian’s wife Krista is waiting at a table to meet them. The three have a great meal, then Brian takes Jan back through the ship canal to Madison Park.
Jan’s mom, Lyn, has surgery to replace her right hip. It all goes according to plan — “Boring!”, says the surgeon afterwards. Lyn’s a little giddy to finally experience relief from constant hip pain.
Jan brings Lyn back from the hospital to our home so she can recover here. We’re actually heading out of town for the girls’ mid-winter break, so Skye and Chris will both be coming into town for a few days to take turns watching over her.
Jan’s sister Skye comes up to Seattle to watch over Lyn while we’re up to Canada for the next week. She brings little Auden with her, now 11 months old.
We head up to Big White, BC, for our eighth week of mid-winter skiing with a group of families from the girls’ K–8 school. The drive up is always a long affair, and we never like the two mountain passes we have to cross over — but this year the drive up is particularly harrowing.
Before we even reach the small town of Hope, BC, there’s plenty of snow on the ground. After stopping in town for lunch, we get back on the highway and pass a flipped semi-trailer truck. As we head up the Coquihalla Pass, the snow gets heavier and heavier. We put on chains at one point, then stop 15 minutes later to take them off after the noise drives us nuts. We stop for a break at the dusty logging town of Merritt, then it’s back onto snowy Highway 97C into the mountains toward Kelowna. Creeping through the snow is made more stressful by the impatient trucks that want to speed along regardless of weather.
By the time we reach Kelowna, we’re far enough behind our normal schedule that we stop to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Mekong. It’s nothing special, but it’s nice to have a break. After dinner, there’s another hour and a half of slow driving along mountain roads to finally arrive at Big White. The trip usually takes 8 hours; this year is took 11 hours.
There’s great snow at Big White — but it’s also really, really, really cold: -20°C / -4°F when we’re getting out for our first runs. There’s a significant wind chill on top of that, particularly at the top of the lifts. By the time we get to the top of the first lift, the wind coming through the vent in Jan’s goggles make his face so cold that it hurts, and his fingertips are numb. We’ll spend much of the next few days wearing all of our ski accessories, stuffing our gloves with hand warmers, and taking frequent breaks in the warming huts.
The snow is pretty great, though. Angela tries renting fatter skis for the powder. Bree enjoys skiing with her friends Asher and Moira. We have lunch at the the Black Forest lodge, and meet up with several other families from the girls’ school. In the evening, the moms have their Moms’ Night Out. Jan stays with the girls and assorted other kids in the condo watching Olympic ice dancing.
As in past years, Anya leaves the rental condo early in the morning and doesn’t return until late in the evening. We see her for about 5 minutes a day. This evening she admits that she probably should have taken a minute to actually eat a breakfast — in the middle of a morning of athletic skiing, she’d felt dizzy enough from a lack of calories that she’d had to sit down on the slope.
We have another day of great snow but frigid temperatures. Here Liya and Angela pause for a moment while Jan takes a picture. Jan takes off a glove to snap this picture, during which time his hand begins to go numb.
In the evening, our group of school-connected families (14 or so this year, it looks like) holds its annual potluck supper.
Group photo of many of the school folks at Big White with us. Not pictured: most of the middle school kids and high school kids, who were too busy skiing to bother.
Bree tries snowboarding for the first time. She has a morning lesson while Jan spends the morning on his snowboard. Jan picks Bree up from her lesson and they have lunch at The Woods. Angela and Liya spend the morning skiing together, then have lunch at The Deli. After lunch, Bree spends the afternoon working on making turns, eventually connecting some toe-side-to-heel-side and heel-side-to-toe-side turns. In the evening, Jan joins another dozen dads for Dads’ Night Out at the Blarney Stone Tavern.
Bree has a second morning snowboarding lesson. Liya decides to snowboard for the day too, and rents a board so that she can snowboard with Jan. The two of them have a great morning snowboarding together. They meet up with Bree and Angela for lunch at The Globe, then Jan and Liya spend some time with Bree on the bunny hill so she can get more practice linking turns. Bree eventually gets good enough that Jan takes her on her first real snowboard run: a short green run called Hummingbird. She does pretty well, although at the end of the run she ends up gently crashing at low speed through some orange fencing on the side of the run.
Our annual “Family Sky Day” continues to get shorter: this time Anya makes it to 10:30 before begging off to go ski with her friends. The remaining four of us head over to the Gem Lake side of the mountain, but almost immediately things go awry and we’re all accidentally separated.
Jan’s leads the way into some thick trees between runs. Angela decides she doesn’t want to ski trees, so stays on the run. Jan comes to a slope too steep to ski down. Liya’s right behind him, and he indicates that the two of them should ski back in the opposite direction. They eventually find themselves stuck on a rather steep, narrow, tree-lined chute, and have to pick their way down it. Angela radios to say that she’ll meet them at the bottom of Gem Lake Chair. Jan and Liya eventually make it out of the trees, then head down to the bottom of the chairlift. When Jan and Liya finally get there, they see Angela. Angela asks, “Where’s Bree?” Jan: “I thought Bree was with you!”
The Ski Patrol calls us at that point to say that Bree’s at the bottom of a different chairlift. She’d entered the trees behind Liya, but had gotten stuck in some deep powder. By the time she could extricate herself, Jan and Liya were no longer visible. Jan had assumed Bree was with Angela, while Angela had assumed Bree was with Jan and Liya. Bree had to pick her way down the same steep chute as Jan and Liya, only on her own. When she finally reached the run, she couldn’t see any of us, and had skied to the bottom of the closest chairlift. Talking over the incident later, we discover that lots of little mistakes added up. Among other things, Bree had a walkie-talkie on her, but the volume was turned down too low for her to hear us calling for her.
We’re relieved to be reunited with Bree, and decide to call an early end to the morning so we can warm up over an early lunch. We go into the Ridge Rocket Day Lodge. Liya suggests ordering a large french fries to share, but then it turns out we all separately order meals that come with fries. Angela orders poutine, which is nothing but french fries. So our family lunch ends up including several pounds of french fries.
In the afternoon, Bree snowboards a bit on the magic carpet in the Happy Valley area while Angela watches, then Angela takes Liya and Bree ice skating.
Jan snowboards with Bree in morning. They do the Hummingbird run a few times, and then Bree feels ready to go on her first long run from the top of the mountain to the bottom. She’s a bit nervous about getting off the lift, but with some assistance from Jan does fine. She skis down “Easy Out” and “Highway 33” to make it all the way down the mountain. Not bad for her fourth day on a snowboard!
Jan and Bree switch to skis for the afternoon, and meet up with Angela and Liya. It begins to snow — the first snowfall since we arrived — and so the four of us have a great final afternoon on the mountain.
We head back to Seattle. Although the drive up was horrible, the return trip is easy: sunny weather and mostly bare roads.
We see Hamilton at the Paramount in Seattle. The girls got to see it two weeks ago; now it’s our turn.