Season’s Greetings from your 2009 NSC Board! While this has been a challenging year for everyone, the NSC has kept plugging along with our numerous ski and non-ski events and our spirit is running strong. The Board wishes all members, their friends and family happy holidays and we all look forward to an exciting 2010 ski season kicking off a great year.
The NSC had another successful ski season last season with three Tahoe area weekend bus trips. Ex Officio, Curtis Otaguro led the NSC to Telluride, CO for a successful weeklong trip. Karen Soo and Tom Lee led a great long weekend trip to Mammoth Mountain resort in March. Hoyt Nelson, Dick Wong and Brian Chan led a handful of Bay Area hikes. In the spring, we had another successful chicken salad sellout at the San Jose Nikkei Matsuri Festival. We had a great Hawaiian-themed post season event in May. We tried our hands at Bocce Ball in October, biking south San Jose in September, and even waged on horse racing in November. Finally, in November, we held our Olympic-themed preseason event and gave out quite a lot of prizes. There was great food, drink and socializing. Yes, the NSC held quite a few fun events this year!
On the other hand, this 2009 Board also got down to some organizational grunt work. The biggest accomplishment this year was obtaining a California Seller of Travel (CST) number which among many other benefits, means that we now comply with state law that regulates organizers of travel with other Bay Area Council (BAC) ski clubs. Thank you to the CST committee for pushing the small mountain of application paperwork thru!
Also, we boosted the marketing of the NSC brand by completely redesigning the website to be more in line with modern sites creating links to several important third-party, value-added web services. The look and feel is vastly improved in a professional way. Thank you to the web redesign committee for your diligent efforts!
Moving forward into 2010, we have Bus Trip #1 on January 8-10 that converges on Squaw Valley resort for both days. Lodging for Friday and Saturday nights is at the Sands in Reno and the price is $135 (a significant cost reduction from last season). More details on the website at http://www.niseiskiclub.org/trips/. As I write this article, there is a big winter storm brewing and expected for the second week of December. Moreover, the temperatures have been very chilly so far this winter. Prospects for a great snow season are very good so please sign up now for this first bus trip.
Our Whistler trip, January 24-31, 2010, is set and our lucky group is already salivating at the snow reports as Whistler smashes all historical records for most snow in November with over 18.3 feet of snowfall! It looks like this season will host monumental snow conditions for both the 2010 Winter Olympics and the NSC!
The long weekend trip of March 24-30, 2010, led by Trip Director David Jensen, is a thumbs up. We have passed our minimum signup number and some astute members realize that this trip will be yet another awesome one. Snow conditions at Mt. Bachelor auger for auspicious snowfall as well, when we hit those slopes in late March.
Don’t forget our other three scheduled Tahoe bus trips. Trip 2 is to Alpine Meadows and Sugar Bowl on February 19-21, 2010. Trip 3 spends two days at Northstar-at-Tahoe on February 26-28, 2010. And Trip 4 consists of Mt Rose and Sugar Bowl on March 12-14, 2010. Please sign up as early as possible as the NSC has cutoff dates for minimum headcounts for every trip.
So as you can see, 2009 has been a very busy year for the NSC. We have had a whole bunch of fun while also managing to improve the club. It is no accident that the NSC has existed for over 50 years as we manage to keep activities going despite any external world pressures. So please enjoy a wonderful holiday season and we will see you on the slopes in the upcoming 2010 NSC ski season!
