Best of Milan - Cortina 2026

I really get into the Summer Olympics, but have also gotten into watching the Winter Olympics in February in recent years (really since I was home on maternity leave after Niall's birth, I think!).

There were many amazing highlights over the past two weeks-- Johannes Høsflot Klæbo dominating the men's cross-country skiing events, seeing some crazy falls and recoveries (a Swedish ski relay team, a backwards finish in mogul/ski-jumping), and some incredible American triumphs, including Elana Meyers Taylor becoming the oldest woman (41 and a mother of two deaf sons, one who also has Down Syndrome) to win gold in her specialty, the individual bobsled. I loved watching Mikaela Shiffrin overcome her Olympic woes to win gold in the slalom, even as I cringed as Lindsay Vonn majorly crashed on on her race, skiing on a torn ACL, and watched young Jordan Stolz skate to gold in speed-skating.

I never watch hockey, but was compelled to watch (highlights of, because how can one watch that many minutes of hockey?! It's like low-yield scoring soccer!) both the men and women's gold medal games against Canada. The women's game was more exciting, as they were down 0-1 until a few minutes remained in regular time but pulled their goalie to have six women trying to score, and miraculously sent the match into overtime, where Megan Keller scored within a few minutes to win it for Team USA.

Then, on the anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the U.S. men snuck out a 2-1 (overtime) victory over the favored Canadians to take home double gold. Some sexist comments (relating to cozying up with Trump/his cronies) turned me against the character of many of the men's players, but I can appreciate their athleticism and their sports moment, all the while lamenting all of their missing teeth. 

What touched me the most of the games, however, was watching twenty-year-old Alysa Liu bring home her individual figure skating gold medal in a free skate I will never forget and which had me near tears. We gasped at watching Ilia Malinin, the "Quad God," and the favorite for the men's goal, fall on ice repeatedly under the high pressure in his routine earlier in the week, finishing a disappointing eighth. But Alysa, the daughter born out of a surrogate pregnancy to a single Chinese man, and who retired from the sport at 16 due to burnout, made a joy-filled comeback on her own terms, and stunned the figure skating world and all of us watching, bringing home the first American individual figure skating women's gold in over two decades after skating her entire routine with a smile on her face, apparently impervious to Olympic pressure. JUST WOW! 

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Looking forward to LA2028 and the French Alps in 2030! 

Long weekend/unplanned staycation!

Our premature trip home without skiing left us with a (long) weekend free to do local things!

We played a LOT (think: hours per day) of pickleball, Iver's main obsession, in Arcata. 

Kelvin got tickets for the Rastelli Circus at Redwood Acres in Eureka, and we enjoyed a night of entertainment, including watching some really skilled jugglers (two of whom were twelve-year-old twins!), hula hooping, and hoop-jumping, tightrope walking, and other clown antics.  A polar bear inflatable dancing "Gangnam Style" was also a favorite, albeit not photographed!

Jaime, from Ecuador, jumped through this knife-lined hoop...

... and then two more, one with fire!

This acrobat shot an arrow and popped a balloon from the upside-down, arched position with her foot!

Tightrope walking on stilts was quite the performance!

The kids love hot tubs and missed out on hot-tub time for our unused Mt. Shasta Rental, but Kelvin was able to make reservations to visit the local Finnish-style hot tubs in Arcata, Cafe Mokka, which is so old-timey it only accepts in-person reservations and cash!

There was a lot of rain on Sunday and we did some indoor things like Little Passports kits (slime/oobleck and pinball machine!) and, of course- Olympics watching from the comfort of our living room! 

I do love a staycation and hope we do it more! 

Snow says NO: Trains, Chains and No-Ski "Ski week"

We probably got ~6 inches of snow while we were in Reno on Monday-Tuesday.  We were happy that we didn't have to drive a car over the (Donner) pass and Tahoe on the way back-- but our Zephyr return journey to Sacramento turned into quite the adventure.

The train left more than a half-hour later than its original time of departure... and things seemed to be going relatively well. However, just west of Truckee, the train stopped.... and then didn't start going again for over four hours!  Due to the incredible amount of snow that Tahoe got (feet, and including a devastating avalanche that cost some skiers their lives), there were delays in both directions, and the "dispatcher" considered our train less important than some freighters and an east-bound passenger train, so we just had to sit tight. There also was also need for a "spreader," a machine that removed snow from the train tracks, but which only moved at 2 miles per hour, so, once we got going again, we had to stop to not be too close to tailgating the sweeper.... 

What was supposed to be about a ride of about six hours took us... ELEVEN.

The Amtrak conductors were very apologetic and explanatory at steps along the way (including the unknown time of stoppage) and we even got complimentary snacks, water, and dinner around 6:30, which was kind.

The kids played a lot of cards in the observation car...

... we listened to some podcasts.... 

... and I read the better part of a book The Magnificent Ruins on Kindle.  We also met an interesting trauma surgeon across the aisle, who was also quite the magician with card tricks. 

Truckee River 

The snow was lovely... but we got sick of looking at it after a while!

 

We got into the Sacramento train station at around 9:30 p.m., six hours after our expected arrival time, and then we planned to drive north to Mount Shasta for the remainder of our "ski week" (to ski, of course!)  However, yet another winter storm was moving into this area, and it soon became clear (after checking CalTrans and the daily/hourly weather report) that it would have been very risky to be putting on chains and trying to go over the pass near Dunsmuir after midnight...

We decided to ride out the night in Redding, where we slept at our go-to lodging, Home2Suites, and the next morning woke up to it snowing hard in Redding!  We originally planned to stay in a Mt. Shasta AirBnb rental from Wednesday until Sunday.... but the ability to enjoy this "plan" was becoming more and more uncertain due to the weather events before us (ironically, Mt. Shasta had to close their resort last week due to not enough snow this season and had just reopened !). 

We thought there may be a window of time on Thursday -Friday that we might be able to make it up the mountain and still do some skiing, but then we risked getting trapped again in the snow, as the HWY 299 between Redding and home was also a snowy, icy mess with more snow predicted later in the weekend (just before/at the time we’d need to return). There were already a lot of accidents on the I-5, a major interstate (including one car hit while putting on chains), and elective driving in snow and ice is just not something Kelvin nor I are very comfortable doing. 

After a quick family meeting, we decided that we'd rather cut our losses and just head home rather than risk the possibility of getting stuck in snow.... again, more than four hours from home.  We took the snowstorms as a "sign" that the universe didn't really want us to ski this week.  I like skiing, but I don't love it, and I don't particularly like skiing in blizzards or risk getting injured (Kelvin is the same way and we were on the same page). Iver's quite the enthusiastic skier, and Niall was excited to get back on skis after his lessons last season, so we felt bad crushing the kids' ski dreams, but they rolled well with the change in plans (just as they had the day before, and even though I don't think any of us wants to get on a train for a long, long time).

Due to the condition and storms on Hwy 299, we drove back south to Sac, then west and up, taking about six (rather than three) hours to get home (this reminded me of the time Kelvin and I had to drive hundreds of extra miles after not being able to traverse the SoCal snowy Sierras [1000 miles and a night in Bakersfield] and a re-route, ironically on the 299, during the 101 closure during Coastal Snowmageddon 2023). However, there were no chains required nor blizzards to drive through on the route we took.  It was a lot of relief to find sunny skies and a pickleball court awaiting us in Arcata, which filled Iver's cup enough to not be too disappointed in the pivot in our plans.  

The end of "ski week" 2026 didn't end with any skiing, but we are safe and secure in our own beds, which is the most important thing (I also really dislike the cold, even though I had packed all my winter gear including gifted heated socks and heated vest, and I was pretty travel-weary so I was fine with it all). We are great planners, but the practicing of pivoting is also an important life skill. Maybe the universe will let us down the slopes later in the spring or next season but for now we'll watch the professionals tackle the downhill in Milan-Cortina 2026 from the comfort of our (relatively) warm, coastal house! 

Zephyr to The Biggest Little City on Earth

Kelvin heard about a scenic Amtrak train (The California Zephyr), which travels from Emeryville (in the East Bay) all the way to Chicago (2438 miles, which takes about 52 hours [3 days, 2 nights]) and has wanted to ride it for some time.  He tried to talk me into buying tickets to travel over our short Thanksgiving break, but it wasn't worth it in my opinion (about 5+ hours to Sac and then 5 hours one-way on the train for a one night stay in Reno), so we postponed it until this Presidents' Week. We've done a couple of short (1-2 hour) train rides with the kids before-- in Arizona, the Skunk Train in Mendocino County, and our recent Puffing Billy ride in Tasmania, but this was a longer distance for them, still feeling "old-timey" ("We could DRIVE faster than this train!" they kept commenting. "BUT THE POINT IS THE JOURNEY!" we replied). I traveled quite a bit on Amtrak (and Greyhound buses!) up and down the east coast for medical school interviews back in the 2000s and several trains in Europe and Japan, but hadn't been on a western US version.

Sacramento's Amtrak Station

Kids definitely got yelled at for this stunt.

Between Sacramento and Reno, we traversed the lovely Sierra Nevada mountains (Tahoe), snow, Donner Lake, and deer., with brief stops in Roseville, Colfax, and Truckee. 

We visited the Café Car and observation car, and passed the time reading (Iver/me), napping (K), talking, playing logic/puzzle games, and "being bored" (Niall).

Arrival in Reno

Reno Arch

We stayed at the Silver Legacy Hotel & Casino, dating from 1895, and conveniently located a short walk from the Amtrak station. It was nice to be connected to nearby Circus Circus and El Dorado and the kids were delighted exploring the shops and fountains indoors. It reminded them a lot of our last Vegas trip in January 2024 (Kelvin just went to last Vegas last weekend with Tina/Laura for a Backstreet Boys concert but the kids and I stayed at home).

Cake for New Year

Year of the Fire Horse!

We rented a car via Turo and had a nice off-site breakfast at Kaffe Crepe.

A large winter storm (dumping feet on Tahoe) changed our outdoor hiking plans, and we took the kids to see the animated film GOAT, which features a small goat (modeled after Steph Curry) trying to make it big in the sport of Roar ball, that Iver had wanted to see.

We passed some time (and $) playing Arcade games at Circus Circus.

We all did well playing basketball.

Iver won Camel Racing by a nose.

We had a delicious Phở dinner a few blocks from our hotel, and then headed to the Grand Sierra Resort for a magic show at the White Rabbit Theater. 

Pre-show card magic with Eric. 

That's Magic was a great show by Chase Hasty and crew, involving sawing his wife, Kaileigh, in half, and levitation with some good audience participation, which fooled all of us!

The kids enjoyed our hotel's outdoor heated pool and hot tub... while I stayed warm and dry in a cabana!

There was a veritable blizzard in Reno and Tahoe on Monday night, which closed the freeway and prevented our residency friend, Char from coming to join us to hike from her home in Auburn. 

We decided to walk, not drive, in downtown-- morning photos at the Reno Arch! 

We went to the Puzzle Room to do the Egypt-theme "Valley of the Kings" Escape room, which was really well done!  It included busts of Egyptian gods like Anubis, Horus, hieroglyphics codes, scent-mastery, mazes and more, and was really fun and brain-stimulating. Escape rooms (this is now my third) are so fun for me, and we're getting better! 

Niall was an expert at noticing small things and cracking the combo locks (even guessing a one in 10,000 code randomly as well as a four-letter word "NILE" because it was like his name (!), Iver was also really smart at decoding some of the clues including hieroglyphics, and we only required two (small) clues to get out in just under 56 minutes! 

Kelvin braved the icy dicey roads to have some warm Asian soup in Reno. 

We returned to try out the ice rink at the Grand Sierra Resort but, alas, it was closed due to too much snow (even though the storm had calmed down by then). Iver was disappointed to not have a chance to try out his triple axels (HA!), as we've been watching a lot of Milan-Cortina Olympics, including figure skating, but we pivoted to bowling, at the really nice alley within. 

I'm not a great bowler, but did score a130 on my second game, which wasn't too shabby. Niall did pretty well (with bumpers helping), and Kelvin is freakishly good at bowling (188 on his first game here) with frequent strikes (his parents do live across the street from a bowling alley in Orange County). Iver is getting better with some coaching. 

We really enjoyed (and stayed safe) in Reno. It's not quite as overstimulaing to me as Las Vegas and, while I would have liked to be outdoors a bit more exploring some trails, the February weather had other plans. These Cali coastal kids were thrilled to experience a true (4-8 inches accumulated) blizzard on this "ski week" break (with skiing yet to come-- we hope, back in CA!).