Before all the Chens leave for L.A., we take a nice walk down through the forest in the middle of Seward Park, then back along the waterside.
Evrim and Liya are making breakfast and Liya puts some water in the kettle and heats it on the stove. She explains that one needs to help the kettle know how to make the proper sound. She is leaning over it, encouragingly, making an increasingly high-pitched whine that sounds like a boiling kettle: “eeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE!”.
Angela and Liya take Evrim skiing for the first time. They go to Snoqualmie Pass, where Liya gives Evrim a ski lesson. Evrim is a quick study, and by the end of the day is taking a chair lift and doing green runs.
Jan and Liya take Evrim skiing for the second time. Today they go to Crystal Mountain, stopping along the way to drop off Angela in Buckley and to pick up rentals in Enumclaw. When they reach Crystal, Jan discovers he’s left his ski boots at home, so he ends up having to go through a rental line himself.
Liya teaches Evrim some more skills, and Evrim continues to improve. We take the gondola to the summit, and the skies are clear enough to afford views of Mt. Rainier and mountains all around — we can even see, far off, the flat plains of Eastern Washington. We also enjoy seeing a flock of birds (Canada jays, says Google) resting atop pine trees.
We’re at the top early enough to get a window table for lunch at the Summit House and have a nice meal. We spend most of the afternoon on the Forest Queen chair, with Liya and Jan taking turns skiing down with Evrim.
We pick up Angela on the way back, then have a filling meal at Santouka Ramen in Bellevue.
Liya and Evrim have been wanting to have a cheese board for dinner, and make trips to Madison Park Bakery for bread and to the cheese department at QFC. They put together an impressive spread.
Happy 22nd Birthday, Evrim!
Lyn has cataract surgery. When Jan took her in November to renew her driver’s license, she failed the vision test, and it turned out the cataracts in her eyes had gotten noticeably worse. She has surgery today to replace the lenses in both eyes with artificial ones. Surprisingly, the surgery is quick, just 10–15 minutes per eye.
She’s fine and able to walk around after the surgery, but we keep at our house overnight to help her take medicine and make sure everything is okay.
Jan’s brother Chris comes to Seattle for a few days to help keep an eye on Lyn following her cataract surgery.
Dishwasher mystery solved?? For the past few months our dishwasher has been acting very flaky, often cutting off in the middle of washing the dishes.
The machine’s little display will indicate that there’s a problem with the water intake valve that recirculates the water. There will sometimes be a shallow pool of water at the very bottom, but whenever we check the intake valve there, the valve is always clear.
A repairman couldn’t find any problem – when they ran the dishwasher, it worked perfectly. Replacing it was a depressing prospect: it’s not particularly old, and we didn’t want to dump it in a landfill forever just because of a fault with a tiny little part.
This past week the dishwasher suddenly began working again without any problems. But why?
Maybe it’s because we recently changed the brand of dishwasher detergent tablets we use. The previous tablets were encased in a thin layer of clear, water-soluble plastic that dissolves during washing – but what if that wasn’t dissolving quickly enough?
A little bit of plastic could easily become lodged in the intake valve and force the dishwasher to abruptly end its cycle. That would leave behind a little pool of water in which the plastic could finish dissolving. By the time we checked the intake, the plastic would have vanished. And since the repairman tested the dishwasher without detergent, he couldn’t trigger the problem.
We’re crossing our fingers that we’ve moved past this little domestic trouble and can rely on our little dishwasher again.
Whistler ski trip, Day 1. It’s been 10 years since we last went to Whistler, BC, so we thought it was time to go back. We have a cold, clear day for the drive up, which passes quickly – we zip through the border with no wait at all. We stop on the outskirts of Vancouver for lunch at a nondescript breakfast place. The Sea to Sky Highway north of Vancouver is gorgeous on a day like this.
We arrive in the middle of the afternoon and check in at the Pan Pacific Village Center. One reason it’s fun to come to Whistler is that over 30 years we’ve been here so many different ways: while dating, with friends, on a puzzle hunt for The Game, for a bachelor party, with very young kids, in the summertime, with middle school kids, and now again on our own.
We poke around the village a bit. Jan’s forgotten to bring a swimsuit so buys a new one – it’s easy to forget a swimsuit when packing for a cold weather destination. We also stop at the bookstore.
We have dinner at Stonesedge Kitchen, which serves a remarkably good coq au vin.
Whistler, Day 2. It’s another clear day as we head up Whistler Mountain to start skiing. The area apparently hasn’t gotten new snow in a few weeks, so conditions are just so-so. The snow is hard and scraped up off anywhere off the groomed runs.
We have a nice lunch at Steeps at the top of Whistler, then take the Peak-to-Peak gondola to Blackcomb. We spend the afternoon there before heading all the way back down to the village. We finish the day with dinner at Araxi, a restaurant we’ve probably been to on every visit – it’s still good.
Whistler, Day 3. We have breakfast at Provisions and then head up Blackcomb Mountain. One fun moment in the morning: at the base of the Catskinner chair lift, a ski instructor with a group of little kids asks us to accompany one of her kids up the lift. His name is Jasper, and on the lift he explains that he’s three years old, but will be four soon, and after that he’ll be “this many”: he holds up a mittened hand. “Two?” jokes Angela, but the joke goes over his head.
We have lunch at Christine’s at the top of Blackcomb, then decide to head back over to Whistler on the Peak-to-Peak. Our goal is to ski a nice tree glade we found yesterday in the Symphony Bowl. We manage to get to the Symphony Bowl and find the glade run again, then make it to the bottom of the Symphony chairlift a few minutes before it closes for the day. (Anyone who misses the lift has to hike back up to a cat track in order to ski out.)
Back at the hotel, we enjoy a massage at the hotel’s spa, then dinner at a nice seafood restaurant called Wild Blue. We’re seated next to a chatty Indian couple from DC celebrating their anniversary; the husband directs a steady stream of jokes and commentary our way.
Whistler, Day 4. On our last full day, there’s finally a change in the weather: it snows most of the day. We spend the day on Whistler, trying some areas like the T-Bar Bowl that we haven’t explored before. We stop for lunch at the crowded Roundhouse dining hall, and luck out with a table in a bay window looking out over the mountainside.
Towards the end of the day, we’re coming down Harmony Ridge when we spot a nice bowl (“Boomer Bowl”) off to our left. We decide to drop in, and enjoy skiing down to the bottom of the bowl. At that point, the bowl funnels into a pair of chutes called Gun Barrels. Angela manages to sideslip down one of them. Jan decides the chute he’s on top of is too steep, so takes off his skis and hikes back up a bit to find an easier way down.
Back at the hotel, Angela’s relaxing and Jan’s napping when the hotel’s fire alarm goes off. An announcement indicates that everyone should remain where they are while the source of the alarm if found. We stay in the room, trying to ignore the piercing, deafening shriek of the alarm for 20 minutes before it’s finally silenced.
We walk over to the Blackcomb base area for dinner at Wildflower. Both of us are very happy with our entrées, and for dessert we have a glass of ice wine. We walk back to the Whistler Village along a path through woods. In a small park by Fitzsimmons Creek, an artist has installed large elk sculptures light with hundreds of small white lights. Angela says the elks look just like a Patronus from the Harry Potter books.
Whistler, Day 5. The snow continued through the night and into the morning. This brings everyone out early to go skiing but unfortunately it’s time for us to head back home. As we’re walking through the village after breakfast, we can hear the booms of avalanche control explosives.
We put chains on our car before getting on the road. They help quite a bit with traction, but one of them makes a THUMP THUMP THUMP sound. We’re happy when the road descends near Squamish into warmer temperatures so we can take the chains off.
We stop for lunch in Squamish at Taste of Saigon Cafe, which turns out to have amazing pho – Jan’s particularly happy with his pho ga. Before getting back on the road, we stop at the Xoco Chocolate shop, which makes some very nice truffles.