Halloween Day on Lake Tahoe!

Today we decided to take advantage of a beautiful California day and went out on Cramer's boat on Lake Tahoe.  EVen though Marco missed out on our SWEET astronaut costumes and 80's rocking, he made it back for an AMAZING day on the lake.

 Cramer has a super sweet orange boat and he took us around the lake to check out the beauty of the shoreline!

 :)

 THERE WERE EVEN RAINBOWS!!! epicness.

 Marco swam in Lake Tahoe on Halloween day.  Aggressive and impressive!

 While marco was swimming, we checked out the teahouse in Emerald bay!  Pretty cool looking old building!

 Looking back on Emerald bay and all the cool mountains jutting straight up from the shore.

 We stopped at a restaurant somewhere along the shoreline and Shona celebrated her birthday with a nice little Sundae on a Sunday. ha.

 By the time we were heading back (slightly rushing to catch the GIANTS GAME) it was twilight and there were some sweet clouds.

 Hula girl guided us.

 It was so beautiful with the alpenglow on the lake.

 The far peak had one last bright pink moment before the sun set.

 pretty amazing sunset on the lake.

 So amazing that I decided to pose.

 on a chairlift!

 There's a bit of snow on the peaks here and winter is fast approaching!!! That was a perfect end-of -summer day in Tahoe.  Couldn't have asked for a better weekend!

 Great friends make for great times!

Happy Halloween!!!

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND!!

Highlighting this weekend was the arrival of "kumu" SHona, and Andrew!  They made room along their journey down the pacific coast to come by Truckee for Halloween aka Shona's birthday!!

We had lots to do in preparation for an Epic Halloween night!!  Andrew was in charge of our costumes (Canadian Astronauts), SHona was the pumpking carver, I was the baker, and Marco had to leave to go to a fundraiser out of town.  :(

Here was our "to do" list!

 Birthday girl pumpkin carver!!

 The fruits of my baking labour.

 Our snow-man pumpkin!!!

 Andrew's masterpieces!! 

 Super cool but un-sexy astronauts!!! 

Official Poses! It's all about carrying your helmet under your arm!

 Ready for takeoff! 

 amazing.  gloves and all.

 Lot's of fun was had rocking out to sweet 80's music!!!  

HAPPY HALLOWEEN to everybody!

SKi-Quebec Gala!!!

Upon my early arrival back from Europe, I was happy to see that fall was still in the air!!

The season of colourful leaves rustling in the wind... and juicy pomegranates! 

 Leaves are covering the ground, making everything light up with the colours.

Even though I missed fall in the Laurentians, at least there is some left in the city still!!

Fall is also the season of Gala's!  Ski-Quebec-Alpin hosted their gala last night and Mitch, MP, Eve and I got ready together!!!

MP was the official hair stylist!!

And Mitch was in charge of makeup!  TEAMWORK!! on and off the hill!! haha

MP working the iron magic!

The final products!! Merci MP et Mitch!

Our little dressed up trio!  It's one of the only "ski" related nights of the year where we all dress to impress!

It was a great fundraiser highlighted with Gen's retirement montage!!  There was lots of reminiscing and lot's of looking forward to the season ahead!!  Gen's career was inspirational and hopefully someday I will have some amazing results like hers to look back on!

Here are Gen Simard, Marie-Michele Gagnon, me, Sophie, MP Prefontaine and Emilie Desforges!

Mitch and MP being Zen with the blue curtains......

And then the whole half crew!!

Louis-Pierre Helie, Eve Routhier, me, Marie-Pier Prefontaine, Erik Guay, Marie-Michele Gagnon and Ryan Semple!  There's a couple missing but it's really cool to see how many of us on the National team are from Quebec.  I guess we don't mind freezing temperatures, we like skiing on ice and don't get distracted by powder days (since they pretty much don't exist...), and we love racing!!! There's so much support in Quebec and some really great programs; nights like last night really highlight the fact that Quebec is doing something RIght!!  Now that I am looking closely at this pic, this is only half of the Quebec contingent of the Canadian team who was present last night at the gala...I guess it just happened that the seven of us were leaving at the same time.... so yeah, we are cool.

Missing are Britt Phelan, Dustin Cook, JP Roy, Francois Bourque, Julien Cousineau and Vic Stevens (prospect...).

Anyway I am boarding a flight to RENO!! last stop in Truckee before next spring!

random thoughts after huge snowstorms

So, the season has started!!! Mitch attacked Solden like she owned it, and its a super positive start to the season for her and for our whole team!  There's a lot of good skiing going on and I'm sure it will be followed by more great results!!

I have no pics from the race, but I tried to walk up to the race (fail) and here's a pic from my hike!!

Everything was looking good for our slalom camp until this huge storm (same storm that cancelled the mens gs) rolled in and ruined everything!!!  We were so unprepared that some of us were walking around with bags on our shoes.......

 We enjoyed the storm for about a minute, then packed up and got outta Solden.   It's been a really long and successful camp for me and I am ready to do some laundry!! haha.

I'll be home later today and the next stop for skiing is LEVI! yay!

And a cool video that Jean-Sebastien Labrie took at the indoor!! thanks!

Pitztal, HOLLAND (Netherlands...) / SOlden wannabe....

I forgot to add these pictures the other day, but on our photo-shoot day off, Mitch, MP and I decided it would be a GREAT idea to go biking in the snow storm to a little hut up on the hill for lunch....

 The lunch was good, we had pizza, drank coffee, and warmed our feet!

 BUT the way back was a nightmare... 

snow was blinding us, mud was flying EVERYWHERE and everything was soaked and coated in.... cow manure.  no joke, we were biking through the fields which had been recently splattered with the manure for fertilization I guess??? The whole valley stinks of it, and we did too.

 Gross.  A few seconds after this photo was taken I got into the shower fully clothed and spent about 30 minutes trying to get everything clean again....

After everything was freshly cleaned, we headed to Holland, which is a province in the Netherlands, where the Dutch live.  Tres confusing.

But even though we drove 8 hours to get here, I feel like I never left!! There are banners of Austrian mountains behind my bed....

There's "cows" outside my window....

AND, at the top of the hill there is a HUGE Solden banner...  So it seems like we came all the way from Solden to this indoor place that wishes it was Solden.... interesting... haha

BUT the skiing has been really good, we have a nice and ICY injected corridor, and we've been getting tons of volume with 2 sessions a day!

Everything is in one building here, the hotel, the gym, the restaurant and the ski hill...

they even have a mid lodge!! 

And if you get cold, because it's pretty freezing inside the ski area, you can just sneak out the door and breathe some fresh, warm, Holland air!!

That's me secretly sneaking out....

Natural light is rare....

But greatly appreciated! Trying to catch up on some vitamin D.

Anyway that's all for now... Tomorrow we have a 6:30AM training session and then back to SOLDEN! 

but the real question is.... did we ever leave????

da da daaaaaaa

ha ha ok just joking the air here is making me crazy.