The Mtn. View and Palo Alto Buddhist Temples provide us use of their space for monthly board meetings and events so we are looking for volunteers to  help them with their Obon Festivals.  Please sign up so we can enjoy their future support of our activities.  Contact Joel Hayashida at for questions or to sign up.  It takes just a couple of hours and can be a lot of fun getting to know more of your fellow members.

Mtn. View Obon Festival  July 17, 18 Need help for the ever popular beer booth on Saturday or Sunday.  Contact Joel Hayashida at

Palo Also Obon Festival:  July 31, Aug 1 Need help  shucking corn and preparing other food items.

Answers to last month’s puzzle:

Find the digits to make the additions correct:  (Thanks again to Greg Wong for the solutions.)

For this month, consider the following sequence of letters. Remove FIVE LETTERS and what remains is a word you can find in any English dictionary. What’s the word? AFPIOVELLOEGTIERESS

Achluophobia: darkness
Aeroacrophobia: Open high places
Agliophobia: pain
Agraphobia: sexual abuse
Agyrophobia: streets or crossing the street
Aichmophobia: needles or pointed objects
Ailurophobia: cats
Albuminurophobia: kidney disease
Alektorophobia: chickenss

Spring is here and even though we now have glorious warm days, there are still some rather cold days with storm fronts that assault the Sierra Nevada.  The snow pack is substantial enough to ensure decent water flow into our Bay Area spigots this year.  All-in-all, it was a great winter.

And the NSC had another great 2010 ski season.  We had a group of 25 travelers trek to the main snow sports site of the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games: Whistler-Blackcomb.  The excitement of the Winter Games was evident during our weeklong trip and we all took home many great memories.  As for the NSC bread and butter, the Tahoe bus trips, we held four trips and did not cancel any.  Snow conditions were generally good and we all had a blast.  The Board introduced some initiatives aimed at attracting those who have never taken in the NSC Tahoe weekend bus trip experience and the initiatives were successful in increasing our headcount numbers to healthy levels.  The results of this season’s initiatives will be expanded on next season.  The NSC had a good 2010 season that will be expanded on for the 2011 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ballots for election of the NSC board of directors will be sent out in May. It’s still not too late to nominate members for the following: President, Vice President, Trip Director, Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Chair, Newsletter Editor and Board Members at Large. In fact, you can write in a candidate of your choice. If you would like to volunteer for a position (as Frank Chang volunteered last year to be treasurer), don’t be shy. It’s a great way to give back to the club and get to know the board and its workings better.

Contact Alice Horio at

I’ve been in the San Francisco area for over two years.  I learned to snowboard at Keystone in Colorado and rode many of the ski resorts around Washington DC where I worked at the time.  One of my favorite resorts was Snowshoe is West Virginia.  It is small but nice and the resort is at the top of the mountain where  the lifts bring you back to the resort.  Since moving to San Francisco I wanted to return to the slopes but none of my friends skied.  Sure, they wanted to go and we kept saying we’d go some weekend but it never came together.  I didn’t know any of the area resorts or the best way to get there.  Then finally a friend mentioned the NISEI SKI CLUB’s trips and their discount for new members.  It looked great!  I signed up for trips 3 and 4. Read the rest of this entry »

Storks: A mustering of storks
Swans: A lamentation or wedge of swans
Swine: A sounder or swift of swine
Toads: A knot of toads
Trout;: A hover of trout
Turkeys: A rafter of turkeys
Turtledoves: A pitying or dule of turtledoves
Turtles: A bale of turtles
Woodpeckers A descent of woodpeckers

Answers to last month’s puzzles:

An easy answer for last month’s puzzle of 4 x abcd =dcba is 0000 (I lost the harder one).
For the 5 digit number, 4 X 21978 = 87912. Congrats to Greg Wong for solutions.

For this month:

Each of the letters in the addition problems below stands for a unique digit. Find the digits to make the additions correct:

Challenging problems are always solved with challenging solutions.  For example, winning the War on Terror, fixing our nation’s healthcare system, and navigating out of the Great Recession, each are complex and multifaceted and broad-based issues that will eventually be solved by the accumulation of numerous small or large “fixes” or actions, each of which may be controversial in whole or in part.  There are no silver bullets here.  There are no fantastic “one size fits all” or one hit-wonders that will solve these major problems of our time.  These challenges will at best be solved by an iterative and interactive process that converges on the eventual resolution.  The road has been, and is paved with good old fashioned hard work.  Yes we will at times be uncomfortable, but in the end we will be stronger and happy to have solved these challenges of high calling. Read the rest of this entry »

In my experience, all NSC weeklong trips provide many great memories and special moments.  For me, as I happened to be the trip leader for this trip, I had some of the usual great memories of yet another great NSC week, but in addition, I experienced some events during the week of January 23-31, 2010 that not only gave me a unique perspective on why we ride on snow, but also how to live life. Read the rest of this entry »