Sometimes the Snow Comes Down in June

There are basically two routes from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone:

• Through Idaho on I-15.
• Through Wyoming and the Tetons on various smaller highways.

I'd been planning for months to use the latter route (I mean, what's interesting in Idaho right?), but for whatever reason, we changed our minds at the last minute and went through Idaho, to the west entrance of the park.

This was possibly the best decision of the trip. First, we got to see a herd of buffalo on the road! With baby buffaloes too! The ranger had just given us a scary cartoon of a visitor being gored by a buffalo ("uh oh, that looks like Tommy!"), so we were too chicken to roll down the windows.

But the real advantage of choosing I-15 was that the snow started coming down hard. And all three of the other park entrances (south, east, and north) were completely closed. Chris and I were worried that we would (once again) get caught in the snow with a lousy two-wheel-drive car and no chains.

Mom, inexplicably, was worried that we didn't have a compass.

Best Music of the Drive:

• Vivaldi's Four Seasons. (Jenn: "Oh Winter is perfect for this weather; it sounds just like a snowstorm." Chris: "Um, this is Summer.")
• I'm on a Boat! (AWWW SHIT! My parents and my brother had apparently never heard this before.)

When we finally arrived at the Lake Lodge, after a couple tense hours of driving in the dark in with juusssst-almost-too-deep snow, we found that our peril wasn't over. Apparently Uncle and Ayi had endured hours of puppy-dog-eye treatment from the lodge staff and stranded visitors, who wanted to use our room for the night, since nobody believed we could enter the park.

It's crazy to be reminded how difficult it is to figure out simple things like meeting up without cell reception!

Best comment of the night: "You weren't expecting to see snow when you got dressed this morning, were you." --Stranger, chuckling about my shorts and flip flops.

Most depressing comment: "Who's Vanessa Williams?" --My cousins, who have never heard 'Save the Best for Last' before. 1991 wasn't THAT long ago, was it?

Family Reunion in Yellowstone

Whew! Just finished posting pictures from our week-long family reunion in Yellowstone!

Yellowstone

It took a while to get Picasa face tagging to work, but I figured it was worth it to be able to filter out all the random shots of buffalo butts and steaming holes of water (pretty as they are).

I think this was the first time all twelve of us have gotten together since our wedding in 2006, so it was super exciting that everyone's schedules lined up for this trip! Who knows when we'll ever get a chance to do this again, so I'm just going to jot down some highlights to remember the trip by. I'll split it up day by day, since it's really painful to make gigantic posts in Blogger.

But first some stats!

We were lucky enough to spot 15 of Yellowstone's awesome animals. Credits, in order of appearance:

• Buffalo
• Elk (a.k.a. Kally's 'white-tailed deer')
• Duck
• Crane
• Canada goose (boring)
• Black bear (three times!)
• Bighorn sheep
• Coyote
• Wolf (black and grey, eating coyote pups!)
• Sage Ruffed grouse (a.k.a. 'Snurkey')
• Marmot
• Moose
• Pelican
• Bald eagle
• Beaver

My family also loves to take pictures with all combinations of people. We were curious how many combinations of 12 people there actually are, and here's the answer.

Number of People	Combinations
1	12
2	66
3	220
4	495
5	792
6	924
7	792
8	495
9	220
10	66
11	12
12	1

Total number of people combinations for photos: 4095

I took a total of 599 pictures (most of which consisted of buffalo butts and holes of steaming water), so I bet we didn't even come close to getting all the combos. Goal for next time, haha.

We also drove a LOT in our two minivans. Our little white Chrysler Town & Country went through 4 states and a total of 1,534 miles.

To Infiniti and Beyond!

We got a new car!!! :-)

It's an Infiniti G37 (hence the dumb pun in the title). We're so excited!! It accelerates so smooth that I have to keep checking the speedometer to make sure I'm staying under 90 mph, haha. Even the name of the color is super sleek: Graphite Shadow.

After a year of complaining about the Avalon's long list of problems (spastic engine acting like it wanted to jump out of the hood, broken clickers, broken seat belt, no key access to the trunk, broken cassette player), we finally did it. We are, however, feeling a little sad at consigning it to the faraway bat-cave of a parking garage at our complex...it's been a great car. Lots of great memories.

While shopping, we also looked at Audi A4 and BMW 328i, but ended up liking the G37 much better – both how it felt and how much it cost. Plus it's currently rated as the best sports sedan according to Consumer Reports. The A4 was nice, but Chris didn't like how it was hard to check his blind spot, since he had to move the seat all the way back. We might have liked the 328i better, but the salesman only let us demo an older model and didn't seem to take us scruffy twenty-somethings seriously. Oh well, his loss.

Now off to have more adventures with our shiny new toy. Zoooooom!!! :-)

P.S. Don't you think it's great irony that I'm wearing my green save-the-Earth "Stay Cool" t-shirt while buying a (sort of) gas guzzler? Though actually, the G37 has nearly identical mileage to the Avalon, so technically we're not making things worse... Plus we gotta get these fun cars while they're still legal, right? By the time we need another new car, Obama may have outlawed new cars with mileage like ours, heehee.

Win Win Win

The USTA Adult League season is a little more than halfway through, and Chris and I are both getting some fun wins now, after a slightly rough start.

Chris started off his season with a loss to a tough team, probably because his muscle memory was a bit screwed up after all the new things we tried to learn at tennis camp in Utah.

I started with not one, but three consecutive losses at singles. In my very first singles match, I was so flustered that I lost track of the score and accidentally gave my opponent credit for a free game. Before this season, I only played doubles, so I was mentally unprepared for the long, tiring rallies, the different angles, and I was certainly not used to keeping track of the score myself. (So nice to have Chris keep track of the score for me in mixed doubles!)

After such a demoralizing wakeup call, we both hit the courts for some extra practice time. Chris started going to 7 a.m. Saturday morning practices with his team, and I started scheduling singles matches with anyone who would play with me, via OneClick, the ladder at work, my team's practices, anything!

Since then, Chris won his next two matches and developed some killer blazing first serves and evil high-kicking second serves. For me, I won my next seven singles matches, ending with three wins in three consecutive days this weekend. Five wins at 3.0, and two at 3.5 – super-psyched!

Now that we've totally overdone it and are taking a break to nurse our various injuries, time to get some more ice and ibuprofen. Will write more if we make it to playoffs!

Lovely Spring Weekend

A couple weeks ago, Chris's parents came to visit, and we spent the lovely spring weekend exploring the Bay Area.

Wine Tasting at Casa de Fruta

Our first stop was the Santa Clara Valley Wineries Spring Wine Celebration and BBQ, which was at Casa de Fruta (near Gilroy). I know...wine from Santa Clara Valley?! Isn't the real name Silicon Valley? And don't we basically only grow startups here? I at least, have never seen any grapes growing along 101. But actually, they had some nice wines; overall, our favorite winery was Cinnabar.

We listened to a lot of 70s music, and also realized that I was the only Asian at the entire event. I didn't even see any Indians. Seriously non-Silicon Valley. But a lovely day nonetheless! Before we left, we bought some dried fruit and an olallieberry pie. There was much confusion as to what an olallieberry is, but here is the final equation (according to Wikipedia):

Loganberry = Blackberry x Raspberry

Youngberry = Blackberry x Dewberry

Olallieberry = Loganberry x Youngberry

Olallieberry + Pie = YUM!

Hiking to Tomales Point

The next day, we went hiking in Marin for the very first time (despite having talked about wanting to go for several years now). We chose to hike to Tomales Point and it was gorgeous; ocean views, wildflowers in full bloom, and plentiful wildlife (elk). What more could we ask for?

We also ran into this interesting flora (below), which Kevin Gong's site calls a "thistle". But we dubbed it the "Mordor Flower".

You know, flaming eye, ensconced in a spiky pillar (of sorts)?

Anyways, beautiful weekend. Very glad Chris's parents came out and motivated us to do something other than play tennis! Please feel free to look at more pretty pictures from wine tasting and hiking on Picasa.