Like every year, my company has somehow been able to organize a company-wide ski trip for an ever growing number of employees. However, this time they had to split the company in 3 waves, because there was just no way to make us fit in all the hotels at Squaw, even by putting 3-4 people per room.
Because my intent when going there is indeed to get as close to 2 full days of snowboarding as possible, I went got up at 04:30 (ouch, ouch, ouch!) and left Mountain View on the 05:30 bus, on which I managed to get with most of my stuff (including my cell phone, which I didn't know I had managed to pack afterall).
Snow the first day was actually decent, but the weather sucked: I don't mind snow, or bad visibility, but the visiblity was indeed quite poor, strong winds, and rain...

Crack of down trip to Squaw, thankfully I slept part of that trip


Bad weather on the first day, but better snow


Wet and rainy weather on day 1, with high wind, causing ice like this

The second day (friday), the weather was nice, but the whole mountain was icy most of the day, except for some sun facing groomed runs.
I actually managed not to really fall during the entire time despite the sometimes dicy conditions, until I pushed my luck a bit while trying to jump a small pine tree, and didn't quite get the jump right, got my board caught and ended up doing a face plant, and got some hard snow rash on my cheek. Oh well, that'll teach me :)

No, I wasn't the biggest geek at the google party :)




trying to build an oscillator on a circuit board

The Thursday night party itself was all right. I was tired, the food was so-so by google standards, but it was still fun, especially with my shiny shirt :). I spent the rest of the evening talking on the phone in the snow outside until I started getting really cold :) and went to bed soon after that

Day 2 weather was better, but the snow was crap as a result (icy)

You can look at the rest of the Pictures of Squaw and the Google Party

While my original plan was to stay during the weekend, but the snow conditions were just not good enough to warrant that. Instead, I spent a very nice weekend in good company, which included me not doing a whole lot besides rollerbladding, and being very happy with the end result :)
(the rollerblading path goes by a duck pond, and right by final at Palo Alto Airport, so it was also nice to watch the planes land).