The New Year!

This last weekend has been magnifique! We kicked off the brand spanking new year right with good times and good friends

- is it "oh ten" or just "ten" or is it "twenty ten"? We decided "ten" is the preferred nomenclature so let's just keep that going shall we -

We thought that our best chance of really testing out the ol' prowler and seeing what she's made of, would be to take her into some nice freezing rain, on a skinny highway, in the middle of the night, with some nice cliffs on the side. We were able to brave the perilous trip from Vancouver, WA to White Salmon, WA - but there were the occasional shouts of "did you hear that noise?" "what the hell was that?"

Upon our arrival in White Salmon, we found our friends at the White Salmon Inn in Washington

http://www.innofthewhitesalmon.com/ (Shameless plug because I love this place - check out their BRT deal) in fine form and ready to rally and bring in the new year right. There were costumes and champagne bottles and an epic snowball fight from the porch that brought 3 strangers up from the street to join in the festivities. We made it to the White Salmon brew pub to rock out to live music and kiss strangers (Kjersti - naughty naughty, I kid, I kid).

Somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at some ungodly hour to ride the slopes at Mt. Hood. At about 15 minutes from the parking lot with rain on the windshild we were moments away from turning around. But the ever-stoked-to-be-on-the-mountain Joel assured us that "conditions were perfect", it was..."business time".

Oddly enough, it was one of our best days on the mountain. We rode in a Wolf Pack, Jon, me, Kjersti, Joel, Kjersti's bro Aaron, and Jesse. The rain turned into fluffy powder at Mt Hood Meadows and it fell all day so that each run was better than the next. Turns out, we were among the few, the proud, who made it out of bed the day after New Years. We lost Flo and Nicole but met back up with them at the bar for some football action and those of us born in Corvallis were not sad to see the Ducks lose (ok, maybe a little).

The next day Jon and I took 'er easy with a nice hike up 'ol Baldy Peak (or so Jon has named it). There was no trail, so what could we do but climb straight up? At the top, with sore legs for both of us, Jon took a rock and chucked it down the hill (come on, you have to when you're at the top of a steep and never-ending hill). Well Bailey took it upon himself to retrieve the rock for Jon; which meant that he disappeared off the shear cliff face. Jon and I were convinced that he had gone the way of the lemmings and tried to go after him. Jon saw him almost at the bottom of the hill running all the way back up. That dog never ceases to amaze. Needless to say, we had worn him out for the day.

The party continued on through the weekend with trips to the hot tub (sanctioned for once - thank you Dave) and rolls in the snow for the all but the pansies in the group (you know who you are), wine tasting, and an all out battle royale on the shuffleboard table. The next day, we were joined by Darcy and Matt, for some sweet fishing on the Klikitat River, followed by a fire with hot dogs, beer, and great company. We were sad to leave our good buddies, I'm not ashamed to admit that I teared up pretty good saying goodbye to Kjersti - but we must keep the good times rolling.

By the way, feel free to send us on quest (all fearless adventurers need one) and check out the pictures and video below.

And stay tuned for an exciting tour of the Prowler...