Google Ski Trip Kirkland Edition 2007

From Mt Crystal

So it seems that people enjoy tying pieces or wood or fiberglass to their feet and sliding down mountains. To facilitate this activity Google sent us up a mountain for a few days.

My trip got off to a bit of rough start when I had to pull an all-nighter to fix some stuff and didn't get a chance to go to sleep before I had to catch the bus up to the mountain. We went to Crystal Mountain which is in Mount Rainier National Park. I decided to give snowboarding a try since everyone said it was much easier than skiing. Now besides being sleep deprived I had also worked out with my personal trainer the day before and he didn't quite listen to me when I said I needed my legs the next day. So my legs were pretty trashed.

I had signed up for the beginner snowboarding class. I made it about an hour in before my legs just weren't doing what I told them to do and decided I should give up before I hurt myself. I headed back to my room and tried to get a nap. I was having a lovely nap until the pool party started just outside of my room. Since I wasn't going to get much more sleep with the party going on I got up and got cleaned up and went to find some lunch. I had missed the normal lunch, but there were snacks to hold me over until dinner.

For the non-skiers they had setup a game room with table tennis, air hockey, and a couple Wiis. I entered the Wii Tournament and all of the practice on Neil's Wii paid off and I made the finals. Next up was happy hour at the Snorting Elk. We had a few drinks and some fun.

Finally it was time for the dinner party. There was a nice buffet with prime rib and an open bar. They also had a mechanical bull, that bungee race thing and a casino. I settled in at a poker table and started taking everyone's fake money. I started with 30k and ended up with 521k. That wasn't even close to enough to win the thing since you can't take the house's money playing poker, but I had a lot of fun. The Wii finals were also held during the party and I came in third and got a nice little trophy for my efforts.

I slept in the next day and just got up in time to grab some lunch and my bus back to Kirkland. I forgot batteries for my real camera so I apologize for the low quality of the camera phone pics above, but I wanted to show just how picturesque it was up there.

I had a good time and am very thankful I work for a company that treats us to stuff like this.