San Onofre Ski Group Get Together

Even though we didn't make it out to do any skiing, I consider last weekend to be the start of my ski season. I got together with the group of friends who I skied with last for the first time since last season. Those who lived between San Diego and LA (Carl, Tyler, and Dianna), I had seen over the summer. But it was awesome to see George, Christina, Nelly, and Chris again. In true SoCal style, we met up last Saturday for an afternoon of surfing at San Onofre. The waves were small and mushy...but its always great to spend an afternoon out in the water. All it takes is one good wave to keep me coming back. After spending the afternoon in the water, we had a surf n' turf beach BBQ. Carl brought down a box of live Maine lobsters that he had ordered, Tyler cooked up some killer steak, there was LOTS of vino and Nellie cooked up an amazing Pinapple cake in the campfire.

By the time the cops kicked us out at 8 (park closing time), we were stuffed and ready to head up to Laguna for a night at Tyler and Diana's favorite dive bar...the "Dirty Bird". The Dirty Bird is an old Marine bar that is a classic dive bar...cheap drinks (by Laguna standards), no frills decor, a rowdy crowd of patrons and mediocre cover band that everyone's rocking out to. If you're heading there on a Saturday night, just beware, its definitely cougar country!

We all spent the night up at Tyler and Diana's place in Laguna. For breakfast, we feasted on a nutritious meal of donuts (I had 4 of them) and coffee...we were truly fueled for the rest of the day. So we decided to go mountain biking. Its hard to believe, but this was my first time mountain biking. We went for a nice ride through the park (10 miles, 1400' vert) that surrounds Laguna. In a surprise move, Carl was the hard charger and led the way up the mountain. I jokingly asked Carl if this meant that he'd be breaking trail this winter. In a true return to form, the previous night's drinking and the lack of any real nutrition from the morning's breakfast of donuts finally caught up with Carl shortly after we reached the top. He keeled over, assumed the fetal position, and started wimpering for food and water. I'm not kidding...it was actually pretty amusing. That firmly answered the question about him breaking trail this winter. Don't worry, he was much better after we gave him some water and power bars.

While the ride up was a challenge (bike fit issues), the ride down was eye opening. In fact, it was actually kind of terrifying. I've done a lot of road riding. But I found the downhill portion of mountain biking to be much more technical in that there's more importance placed on controlling your bike. I also found that I needed to overcome the psychological barrier of telling myself that it was possible for bikes to ride downhill, at speed, over rocks, stumps and other obstacles. Despite telling myself to relax, my hands were gripping the handlebars so tight that it felt like I was crush the handlebars. I did one digger. I think the real key is to get out more and with experience I'll become more comfortable with the downhill sections. But altogether it was a great afternoon.

We finished off the weekend by seeing Warren Miller's new movie "Off The Grid". You can read my review of the movie in a separate post.