When I got asked last minute to be part of Tahoe Snowcial, the logical answer would be to say no. I’m stressed beyond belief with multiple deadlines, hence the paring down of my regular posting, and planning for Mom’s and my Africa trip and our honeymoon, not to mention moving in two weeks (egads! we’ll finally be city kids again!) and have a monster of a book due on Feb. 8. However (you see where this is going), I so rarely have the flexibility to be spontaneous, and as my weekend was empty, I said sure! MC Hammer was the keynote, after all; how can you say no to that?! Or this?:

So I headed up on Thursday afternoon with my pal Harriot, cleaned the casino floor with some tech guys when I made the conference’s poker tourney finals (guess I have more of my dad in me than I thought), and finally gained some confidence on the slopes. The wonderful people at Heavenly Ski Resort gave me an entire day of private instruction with the most awesome ski teacher ever, Patti Vath, and by the end of the weekend, I was ready to tackle some (baby) blacks. If you recall, this is a significant improvement over last year’s disaster of a ski attempt. As SVV liked to remind me, I came home from that weekend spouting false claims: “I am never skiing again!” Famous last words.

(And, yes, that is quite the fetching helmet I’m rocking. When I showed up the first day, and all the professional skiers and boarders were in them, and I, the amateur, was the only one without, I figured it might be a smart idea. They called it the Natasha Richardson Effect.)

We haven’t had snow in a bit, so conditions weren’t perfect—by day three, it was mighty icy on half the mountain—but they were fine enough, and more importantly, void of annoying people obstructing my slightly, at times, chaotic path. The one day, Saturday, where the lifts were a bit busy, I had Ski Instructor Patti with me, meaning we got to go to the front of the line always; it was like having a Fast Pass for Disney World.

The conference part only last for four hours on Friday, quite the perfect timeframe if you ask me, and Harriot and I were blown away by MC’s intelligence. The man knows his social media and, as I’m sure many of you are aware, is considered an innovator in the field.

SVV and Harriot’s boyfriend Bill came and met us on Friday night, and fun was had by all. They skied all the tough runs on Saturday while I perfected my snow bunny prowess. We all met up at the tubing course, because hello! Heavenly has a tubing course! How fun is that?!

You take a tube-style conveyor belt to the top, then someone spins you to the bottom. It was all kinds of awesome. (That’s SVV on the left below.)

That night, it truly was Hammer Time (again), as our boy MC did a show in Harrah’s South Shore Room that resulted in the whole audience taking the stage for the final number, “Can’t Touch This” (duh). Then, I just happened to open this week’s Entertainment Weekly on the train last night to find that today, in fact, is the 20th anniversary of the popular 80’s rap. To be honest, I was excited to see Hammer in the flesh, but figured I’d be bored after a couple numbers, as I know all of three songs of his. (I was actually humming the tune to “Ice, Ice Baby” on the walk over when SVV gave me a strange look and reminded me we weren’t going to see Vanilla Ice. Oops. You know, those rappers from my childhood, they all sound the same to me.) But dude was a performer, and even had his teenage son as a dancer and 16-year-old daughter as a backup singer. The whole show was wildly entertaining.

Can’t Touch This from krysleigh on Vimeo.

On Sunday, I was finally able to hit the Heavenly slopes, and hold my own, with SVV, who is a pretty talented snowboarder. It’s fun having yet another activity we can do together, especially after last year’s Northstar snafu.

Somehow, even now three days later, my right leg is littered with black spots—I look like a week-old, bruised banana—even though I only took two big spills over a period of three days. But it was worth every ache and pain and Vicodin consumed after the fact.

It’s a pretty convenient time for me to actually start enjoying skiing, as SVV and I are going to Mammoth at month’s end and North Shore in March. We might even go in on a share on South Lake next season, and get Heavenly passes. I’m all about that resort, as it has 98 runs, meaning you could ski all weekend without needing to repeat. What are your thoughts on skiing: do you have the bug like I currently do, or does it frustrate you to no end, like was my previous experience(s) learning to ski on East Coast ice? Favorite Tahoe resort? Anyone else going to happen to be at Mammoth Mountain on the Jan. 29 weekend and wanna meet up for a beer?

For more from last week’s slam dunk of a social media event, check out what Porters Tahoe has to say.