Tidbits
- How dreamy is it to ski above the clouds over Lake Tahoe?
- My chance of ANY business success just got SLAPPED.
- Why did I decide to turn around and drive another 500 miles?
April 2023
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 4/1 |
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 5/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Where In The World Was I?
- Mammoth, CA
- 🚐 Fernley, NV
- Reno, NV
- ⛷️ Palisades Tahoe
- Truckee, CA
- 🚐 Winnemucca, NV
- Salt Lake City, UT
Final Day(s) of Mammoth
I stayed for another 2 days while I tried to get some more Twitter content out. More on that later.
That second night, it got a lot colder than expected… Woke up to 44ºF in the van and frozen pipes… Woops! I honestly wasn’t worried though, I knew it would thaw off, and that’s exactly what happened. No issues 👌
🚐 Heading North
Monday afternoon, I headed north! (well… southeast first, then north. 395 was closed due to an avalanche!)
First 1.5 Days In Reno, NV
This was my first time actually stopping in Reno for longer than a couple hours.
My first time here was in December 2020 on a roadtrip from San Francisco to Denver.
And my second time was in June 2021 driving a Uhaul truck with all my stuff moving from San Francisco to Denver!
I don’t have that much to say to be honest. It definitely feels a lot smaller than somewhere like Salt Lake City, UT, the biggest city I was last in.
- Reno, NV – 500k metro population
- Albuquerque, NM – 900k metro population
- Salt Lake City, UT – 1.2m metro population
- Denver, CO – 2.9m metro population
- Seattle, WA – 4.0m metro population
- San Francisco, CA – 7.8m metro population
One thing that stood out was all the casinos and mega resorts scattered around!
I stopped by Coffeebar to grab an espresso and get some keyboard whacking done, then some errands in the afternoon.
On my second morning, I stopped by Reno Coffee Co. then drove up to Tahoe in the afternoon!
Quick aside, I’ve been wrestling between two pulls of desire lately. One being the desire to go to a coffee shop and work, create, produce, etc. The other being to not go to a coffee shop and instead to ski.
The previous evening a big storm rolled through and dropped some pow on Tahoe. I definitely wanted to ski it, but I also really wanted to do more creating. There were some other variables at play, like how the roads would be, chain laws, etc. that I had to take into account.
I opted for trying to get the best of both worlds. I did get some good work done, but to be honest, I think the afternoon ski sesh wasn’t as good as if I had gone up first thing to score some early pow turns.
⛷️ Skiing Palisades Tahoe
It was my first time here!
The first day ended a little prematurely as the clouds rolled in and I couldn’t see anything anymore lol
The second day was just absolutely GORGEOUS. Beautiful blue skies and incredible views of Lake Tahoe from the top!
I was able to still score some soft snow that second day (2 days after the storm). Besides that, there was a decent amount of sun-baked hard stuff. It also got quite warm down at the base. Spring is coming!
I wouldn’t say it was a legendary experience either day. The soft turns were nice, but it was just fun to explore a new mountain in a new place and see what Tahoe skiing is all about.
Side note, the pow is way different out here! Similar to what I described in Mammoth, but a bit more dense! It’s a lot harder to turn in this stuff than Utah/Colorado soft fluffy pow.
A Morning In Truckee, CA
I explored the Coffeebar in Truckee!
Then got lunch at Burger Me (veggie burger, sweet potato fries, strawberry milkshake; yes my burger is upside down, deal with it 😂)
And then took a little walk through town. Cute!
🚐 Road Trip! Wait, Again??
Yep. That afternoon I decided to hit the road again… Lemme explain.
A day before, after my second day skiing Palisades Tahoe, I was sitting in my van chillin’ and thinking about what to do next. I had a lot of thoughts, but here’s a summary of them:
- I felt like I had accomplished what I road tripped out to accomplish: ski Mammoth and ski Tahoe.
- Camping in Tahoe is not as straightforward as metro areas.
- Skiing another Tahoe resort would require another 1.5hr+ of driving around plus trying to find where to camp.
- Although Tahoe is just absolutely beautiful, I have been to the area multiple times before.
- I don’t love skiing after a bunch of sunny days when the snow is just hard and icy. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to basically only ski pow days, and to be honest with you, it’s been freakin’ fantastic.
- I couldn’t help but keep comparing the pow (aka “Sierra Cement”) here to that 2 ft pow dump at Snowbird a couple weeks ago, where it was just blowing up to my torso and face.
- And so lastly, I opened up my OpenSnow app to see
- The next couple days:
- Tahoe getting another couple “flurries” of 1-3 inches
- Utah getting absolutely DUMPED on with another 3 FEET. F E E T.
- After this storm, a dry, sunny period, aka no more snow.
- The next couple days:
And so with all those thoughts, the new thought came to mind…
What if I drove back to Utah and skied this next storm? It might be the last “hoorah” storm before it gets sunny and things start to melt.
What was holding me back was:
- Would I regret not spending more time hanging out in Tahoe, exploring, skiing other resorts like Heavenly (for the views) and Kirkwood?
- I just drove out here and now I want to spend another $150 in gas to drive back??
So, after thinking about it more that evening and sleeping it off…
I knew what I had to do.
Saw my first (and second!) Tesla Semi! I didn’t know they were actually real yet!
I listened to a bunch of videos/podcasts from Hamza (life lessons, social media business) and Andrew Huberman (dopamine, motivation, optimizing hormones/testosterone).
Back in Salt Lake City! Those beautiful Wasatch mountains 🥹
I’ll never know the alternative, but sometimes life’s just like that, ya gotta just take your best guess.
Also, I think this officially makes me a “Powder Chaser” 💪
Business Update
Oh boy has a lot happened 😅
We posted 2 more freebies. One went well, the other absolutely flopped.
Then, this happened:
Twitter updated their API tiers, unfortunately destroying any chance of us succeeding… So, I have ~30 days left of API access before their changes roll out and I lose access. In that time we’re gonna give it our best shot, see what happens, then pivot.
Just a part of the process 🤷♂️ Exciting times ahead of us!
What’s Next?
The final storm of the ski season??