Saturday, February 23, 2013

Ski Day

One Wednesday in early February, after a weekend of snowing, I took a ski holiday to Stuhleck about an hour outside of Wien. Wien was foggy, and the whole way to the mountain, but exactly after a long tunnel before Stuhleck, the sun broke! A perfect deep blue sky. The sun made me feel like it was California all over again.

I rented skis and took to the hills. Since I was alone I just skied and skied. There were no crowds, so I went up the lift, down the hill and over again. Two hours in the morning, then a pause for lunch followed by another couple of hours in the afternoon. I was sooo tired, but it felt great to cruise down the hills, carve some turns, get some speed under my feet.





December in CA!!

In December me and Ani visited California over Christmas. Boy is the winter weather great in Calif! From the dreary gray of wintery Vienna, we came into the sun again! The sun blazed, the sky was blue. It is so nice to feel the sun warm your skin. This may be a little thing, but when you miss it, it's unbelievable how good it feels.

We visited Mom/Grandma, dearest Tessa, and old friends. We kept busy, went ice skating in SF, visited the beach in SF, in halfmoon bay, Pacifica, took a hike through the redwood forest in the Oakland hills. Nature is good! We painted plates in Berkeley. Tessa made a super portrait of a ice bear, I did a plate with an alpine scene, and Ani painted xxx. We played mini-golf in a super cool course in Alameda, where the holes were places around the Bay: lombard street, the golden gate bridge, the High street bridge, and even more mundane sites like the oakland harbor. We ate Japanese food, high chic mexican food, and good old italian. We also spent quite a bit of time in bookstores, and brought a stack of 'em home.

I didn't take so many pictures, because I wanted to focus more on being there and taking in that feeling. Here are a few photographic memories.





Gym Pictures!

My friend Werner collects here and there videos and pictures from our weekly gym sessions. Every 1/4 year of so he gives me 4Gb worth of videos. Mostly they are useful for looking at my form, so there are a lot of pictures/videos of the same trick done over and over again. I haven't posted anything though for a very long time, so here are some highlights from 2012! The videos include Werner's skeptical coaching voice, often in a funny Viennese accent :)


The belt halves your weight!


Some simple stuff, apparently still not correct enough for my coach!


A real handstand on the real rings!


Backflips!!


Normal Giants.


Backward Giants.


It isn't always easy!


Simple half twist.


P-bars. Handstands.