월요일 오후: hey there! how's it going? i'd like to say that it's been a long time since i wrote a journal entry, but i know that i wrote one on 2005년01월13일. that was an unfinished entry though. i haven't had a chance to give you a thorough update on my life and to document my life in a long time. i hope i don't "lose" last week from my life. perhaps knowing that i lost some of my 2005 beno journal has indeed discouraged me a bit from writing more journal entries right now. well, hey; more than anything, i've just been so busy with work that i haven't had time to write journal entries. i worked a rigorous 12-hour day on thursday, hoping that i wouldn't work too late on friday, so that the beautiful kaela hwang n' i could take off to tahoe. as expected, i missed taekwondo sparring practice on thursday evening. last week, i started the week out well, getting a decent amount of exercise. as the week progressed, i ended up not getting as much exercise. well, i don't think i got any exercise on thursday or friday. work's been getting busier, and i'm committed to taking my career more seriously this year, right? right. i had some unpleasant evenings last week, like that one night that kaela kept watching t.v. programs that i hated. i don't know what that was all about. on thursday night, kaela and i watched king kong it was a long movie. it was a decent movie. in a way, i think between the two big winter blockbusters, i preferred king kong over memoirs of a geisha. kaela and i surprisingly still have not watched the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. the week before last, we kept saying we would go watch it but instead sat on the couch, watching random t.v. programs. i don't like t.v. that much. "kill your television."
kaela and i drove up to tahoe on friday night, south lake tahoe. we fought rush hour traffic, leaving the bay area. in a way, we might as well have just left later. we at in-n-out in pleasanton on our way up. the burger joint was full of loud teenagers from foothill high school. i discussed with kaela how i could sense that these kids' worst fear was of "not fitting in." it's so true, isn't it? i could sense the awkwardness of late adolescence and teenagedom. these kids looked rich though. i don't know if that makes matters worse or better. honestly, i grew up amongst relatively wealthy kids. was it harder? well, i have nothing to compare it to... except that when i went to berkeley for college, i think the average wealthiness of my social circle did honestly drop. i make absolutely no judgement from that, i.e. i don't believe you can assign value to a person based upon his/her parents' wealth. anyway, was it harder to grow up amongst wealthy kids (or at least kids of wealthy parents)? well, yeah, you feel the pressure to wear nice clothes and maybe might wish that you had a nicer car or could go on nice vacations like your classmates. for the most part, i had nice clothes. i got to drive a decent, hand-me-down car. yes, my parents provided well for me; but i hope i wasn't spoiled.
anyway, i digress! the road was clear on the way to south lake tahoe. at a roadside gas mart, kaela and i ran into michelle kim whom we know from the ucmap / berkeley taekwondo. i run into her in random places. it's interesting. as i was browsing through an aisle of the store, i hear her asking, "beno?" i was surprised. kaela and i rolled into the embassy suites parking lot around midnight and checked in. the national brotherhood of skiers (nbs) was there for a big event. the nbs is a very interesting group. you should check out their website: http://www.nbs.org/. it is a group that encourages wintersports amongst minorities. as they seem to have been founded by african-americans, they seem to be focused mostly on african-americans. that's really cool. i've always enjoyed seeing more racial diversity on the slopes. i keep saying that skateboarding is one of the sports with the most asian-american professionals, yet snowboarding (as it is today) has so few. most asian pro snowboarders are japanese people in japan. i did see an ad in a snowboarding magazine once featuring a female pro snowboarder named yulin. anyway, when kaela and i got to the embassy suites, music was booming from the nbs party. kaela and i went up to our suite and got settled in for our short, short stay. (we only rented the room for one night.) i find it interesting that since we have a nice house with a nice shower, a nice tempurpedic bed, and dish network t.v.; i'm much less excited by hotel rooms. usually, they only have cable with a few channels, a decent bed (hopefully even king size), and a decent, clean shower. who would've thought my life would turned out this way? "can i have it like that? you got it like that. can i have it like that? you got it like that." well, a suite in the middle of the city of south lake tahoe on martin luther king jr. weekend is not cheap. thus, i only wanted to stay one night. it wasn't the best planned snowtrip. it was for kaela's school, in case you didn't know. [later] at the embassy suites, we ate a huge buffet breakfast with eggs, potatoes, fruit, and very fattening breakfast meats! i believe the bacon might have been less fattening than the sausage. i managed to squeeze quite a bit of fat out of the sausage. kaela and i ate breakfast relatively fast. then we checked out of our suite, put some things in my subaru forester, and went in search of a shuttle bus to bring us from the heavenly gondola to the heavenly california base. that was a litttle bit more confusing than anticipated. you see, one can easily jump onto the gondola in the middle of the city and ride up to heavenly's mid-mountain. however, we needed to meet up with kaela's classmates to buy our college group discount tickets. eventually, we got on the right shuttle.
we got a slightly late start to the day on the slopes. we rode a little with kaela's classmates. one couple was a norwegian couple with decades of skiing experience. they rode telemark skis and were two of the few people that i've eer witness ride them well. in my opinion, telemark skiing is like backcountry snowboarding in that many people love the image of doing these things, while few are actually good at them. thus, i often see backcountry snowboarders and telemarkers sitting frustrated, stuck in powder with their full backpacks. when i see them, i wonder how they could possibly be having fun. anyway, these two were good at it, so i looked forward to riding alongside them. we also rode with these two other guys: one of kaela's classmates and his childhood friend who grew up with him in monterey. i was surprised to find out that these two asian-american guys grew up in monterey. well, after our first real run, we lost these two. kaela and i ended up not riding too long before the snow got so heavy that kaela convinced me that we should head to the front side. to do that, we rode down heavenly's famous "face" run. i've done this supposedly "double black diamond" run several times before. it's a good workout. the face was crowded on saturday, full of people struggling to get down. you might think i say that with resent, mocking them; but no... it is a tough run. i got quite a workout weaving around those moguls. honestly, i don't fall much but i did fall a couple of times on the face. well, we got down to the bottom, and kaela wanted to break for lunch in the overpopulated cafeteria. after waiting a while to find a table and even waiting to enter the cafeteria area (to buy food), i decided with kaela that i would go up and ride for the rest of the afternoon, while kaela would call it a day. at that point, i headed straight for the baby terrain park (off of groove and patsy's, if you know heavenly geography). i had a few good runs, riding plenty of rails and boxes. i now feel decently comfortable riding all sorts of bent, crooked, sloped, and rainbow rails and boxes; but i gotta confess that i still only ride them 50/50 and don't yet do frontside or backside slides. anyway,it was fun. the snow came and went, came and went. just before 3:30 pm i called it a day and headed back down the face to find kaela. this time, it took me only about eight minutes to get down, but i ended up unknowingly veering off to the blue square (intermediate) world cup run at the bottom instead of completing the mogul run. well, it's much more pleasant to ride world cup than the moguls; but the moguls are a good workout. i have seen very few skiers ride moguls well and almost no snowboarders. it was actually nice to see some skiers on saturday ride the moguls well. [unfinished entry]