sarahsnowchic

...and so i find myself in the conundrum of having started writing a travel blog and then using up all my travel leave in one go. I'm used to exaggerating my daily life into would-be-exciting-if-not-so-mundane exerpts about multiple gym classes, topical and celebrity news, outfits that resemble david bowie, and everday annoyances like traffic and burnt toast.  These fit conveniently into the constraints of a few hundred characters allowable on facebook and less often on twitter-as 140 characters renders me into a paralytic state of writers block. While readers are probably left wondering WTF at the abbreviated shorthand ridiculousness...I like to think these teasers leave the reader wanting more. However something tells me i'm not quite ready to broach an essays worth blog length entry about the perils of internet shopping....in case that isn't, well, the case. So in the meantime, what to do in such a predicament if i am to keep my loyal follower(s) (anonymous though you o...

This day began like many others. Glimpsing through a cracked bus window...or trying not to (are they bullet holes?!).. peering past the swinging rosary beads towards a hillside landscape sometimes dense with coloured concrete shanty houses, today with thick luscious jungle foliage intersperced with cornfield and farming plantations.  We'd descended a couple of thousand metres toward sea level into the tropical, humid Chiapas and a thick fog set an eerie presence as it circled and nestled into the surrounding mountains.  There was also something else a little different about this particular bus ride. A spanish-speaking seemingly local guy in a cowboy hat up the front of the van was passing back a bag of dried chilli grasshoppers and offering swigs of the local spirit "Mezcal" (thankfully no worms inside) which the driver was relishing in a one-for-you-one-for-me type fashion which proved quite disconcerting as we careered around the narrow corners often toward...

Thus begins a story from the road...contemplated while driving south on Highway 395, an almost 1000 mile feat since we left San Francisco all those days ago.  This journey took us from Lake Tahoe California into Nevada and back to California through Yosemite National Park, onto Mammoth Ski Resort and eventually into Los Angeles.  The rugged snow-capped mountains of the glacier-carved Sierra Nevadas formed an epic and impressive backdrop to an otherwise vast open plain where true to form tumbleweeds certainly did blow in the wind.  The landscape reminded me of No Country For Old Men... so i guess i was glad i wasn´t.... at times like an old Western.... a little bit Dances with Wolves..and as we chanced upon the number of Native Indian/American Reservations dotted along the way, you´d be hard pressed to miss them with the accompanying massive Casino and little else. maybe a $4.95 rib special.  But for the rest of the time a...

Our sixth and final day exploring South Lake Tahoe and her surrounding resorts has come to an end. 5 resorts in 5 days has been an epic undertaking and one i could not have survived without my daily breakfast of Advil and a supersized coffee...not to mention an apres massage and hot tub mid week! We started and finished in Heavenly Valley, sister hill to Vail Resorts, Colorado where my first turns were carved into that massive mountain back in the Winter season of 03/04. Reminiscent of these bluebird days riding loops of the courdroy under Chair 2 in my lunch break, much of this week has taken me back onto the groomed packed powder that i became so familiar with on my first north american snow season.  Since this first experience in Colorado where i earned my keep selling alpine outerwear and coyote fur trimmed apres attire, i have been fortunate to consolidate big mountain riding and snowboarding the powder with another northern hemisphere seaso...

A chance to reflect on the journey so far having safely arrived in South lake Tahoe after a day of touring through the Napa Valley wine region north-east of San Francisco.  And when I say safely… surely being chauffeured around wine tasting while navigating from the passenger side of the wrong side of the road can’t be that hard?! Except for the strange sensation as you nervously check the rear view mirrors that you are somehow controlling the vehicle and usually too close to the oversized Chevrolets and right hand road block for my liking… So 2 days in San Francisco and armed with childhood Fullhouse row-house memories and adolescent nostalgia from a road trip here with my dad 7 years ago….. a Drew Barrymore movie “Going the Distance” and later Sean Connery’s “The Rock” (must be on loop here on cable) added a sense of romance and mutiny to the inclusive community vibe of the Rainbow City. It is also unseasonably warm here perhaps unprecedented by my not checking the weather for...