Armand Gutierrez, President

Summer has officially arrived and we’re experiencing unusual weather. You may have noticed that there are warm-to-hot days followed by cold days. This is caused by alternating high and low pressure systems over the bay area, and is not typical for our summer pattern.

NSC Annual Membership Meeting and Luau Picnic, June 10^th

Once again we had a great turnout for our annual membership meeting and luau picnic, and the weather was warm and sunny. And once again I didn’t win the Left-Center-Right game that Karen sponsored. Congratulations to Patt Dumlao for being the big winner. Thanks to everyone that showed up and had a great time.

Upcoming Events

Mt. View Obon Festival is on July 21^st  and 22^nd. This is an annual volunteer event that NSC participates in and is always a fun event. After all, there’s a variety of food, carnival-style games, cultural events, lots of people, and the famous Beer Booth. If you’re interested in volunteering here is the link for signing up: http://signup.com/go/KTroJEG

Big Sky Ski Week 2019

Plans are moving smoothly for the Big Sky ski week trip for 2019, and the date is 19-26 January. The Big Sky flyer has been posted and you can now send in your applications. This trip will be limited to 36 applicants so be sure to send yours in early.

For 2018-19, Big Sky will be on the Ikon Pass, and is also good for Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows. Here is what you need to know about the Ikon and Epic Passes for the Big Sky trip:

• Purchase the Ikon Pass (Big Sky, Squaw/Alpine) from Sports America and receive a discount on the Big Sky trip. Go to this link to purchase: https://www.sportsamerica.com/ikon-nisei
• Purchase the Epic Pass (Northstar, Heavenly, Kirkwood) and receive a discount on the Big Sky trip. The Epic Pass cannot be used at Big Sky, but if you go on the Big Sky trip you will receive a trip discount. Go to this link to purchase: https://www.sportsamerica.com/epic-nisei

Patt Dumlao

On June 10th 2018, the Nisei Ski Club had their annual picnic celebrating the club’s 60th year. It was announced that we are one of the oldest ski clubs on the west coast.

It was a pretty good turnout with members, family, and friends showing up. The weather was warm and breezy. A lot of entrée and dessert dishes were brought in by the members as well as varied liquid refreshments. You couldn’t stop eating (LOL) umm..umm..good! Karen Soo was our terrific grill chef for the day. As everyone enjoyed the food, it was a good time catching up with new and old friends.

“El Presidente” Armand made a few more announcements about the next weeklong ski trip to Montana. More on that in another article. Thanks and gratitude were given to those that volunteered in making this picnic successful and he also mentioned some changes in the Nisei Ski Club including new members of the board.

Once the club business was done, the traditional Left-Right-Center game commenced. Those that were new the game had fun learning how to play as well as being enjoyed by all. About 30 people circled around and participated. The winner of the game is typically “volunteered” to write this article about the picnic.

It was a great social day. Thanks everyone. . .

Greg Wong

This is my last article as Membership Chairperson.  It turned out to be a three year tour that went in a blink of an eye.  The membership ended the year with 74 members.  It has roughly been the same for the three years.  Long gone are the years of 200+ members.  Now, the club is a core group of people with some new members.  

I like to welcome Tina Woo as the new Membership Chairman this year. If you have not met her, say hello.   She comes in with new and needed enthusiasm.  Tina has some new ideas for the club to bring in new members. You will hear about them in future articles and events. I hope other members join in her membership activities.  I wish her good luck.    

Judy Hom

This is my last edition of the newsletter. It is hard to believe that I’ve been your newsletter editor for three years. It’s even harder to believe that I’ve been the Nisei Ski Club newsletter editor on and off for 11 years. Indulge me as I walk down memory lane.

My first stint started in 1997. Ron Nishimura decided that he needed to recruit a bright-eyed and bushy tailed new member to be the newsletter editor otherwise he would be stuck with a second term. It sounded interesting and not knowing any better, I said yes. Here’s a link to my first column as newsletter editor.

Back in 1997, the newsletter used to be quite a production. Articles were collected and laid out for printing on 11″ x 17″ paper. Four pages fit on 11″ x 17″ paper double-sided. The ideal number of pages for the newsletter was in multiples of 4. The smallest newsletter was 4 pages long and the typical newsletter was 8-12 pages. If push came to shove and there was not enough content, then 8.5″ x 11″ inserts were used.

The newsletter couldn’t be too big otherwise it would be heavier than 1 ounce, which would require additional postage. Once the newsletter was laid out, I took it to the copy shop to get 300 copies made. I organized the collating and stapling of the newsletter instead of paying extra to have that done for me. I used to recruit club members and even family to do that every month. Later, my husband Winston bought a used washing machine sized HP laser jet printer and we did the printing at home. I have fond memories of Winston dropping collated copies of the newsletter on the floor and sometimes on my head for stapling and stamping.

In 2004, the club offered a PDF version of the newsletter as an option to the printed newsletter to lower printing and mailing costs. In 2007, the club made the PDF version standard and the printed and mailed version an option with a small fee to cover costs. Finally in 2013, the club dropped the PDF version and made the newsletter online only.

It’s been interesting to work on the website only version. I’ve gotten a chance to learn new tools like Word Press and brush up on my HTML. In addition, the website version allows me to correct and revise articles any time. I used to feel badly when I found mistakes in the printed version after it went out — no more!

I’ve done this job for so long because Nisei Ski Club is a wonderful group of people. After all, that’s how I met my husband Winston.

In closing, I would like to welcome the brand new newsletter editor Judy Bracken. Some of you may have met her on the weeklong trip to Vail. In fact, Judy B. wrote the article about the club’s 60th anniversary trip to Vail. I find it serendipitous that the incoming editor is also named Judy. Please give this new Judy a warm welcome and your support.

Hello Nisei Ski Club! Thanks for selecting another Judy to be newsletter chair. I’ve got a tough act to follow after the awesome job Judy Hom has been doing for a very long time! I will do my best to keep you all informed with club happenings via the online news.

Skiing is one of my favorite pastimes and has been since I began to ski at age 8 in Utah. I always took it for granted that skiing was easy and accessible, living where it was a 40 minute drive to the top resorts of Deer Valley, Park City, Alta, Snowbird, Solitude or Brighton. Then when I spent four years at college in Colorado, it was more of the same. It wasn’t until I lived in Texas for a couple years that I realized how lucky I had been! I was overjoyed to be back in the West when we moved to California in 1991. Since then I’ve explored most of the Sierra resorts, settling in on Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows as favorites.

My three sons and I enjoy skiing together, but it’s not often our schedules coincide. Joining the ski club was a great way to find other adults that love to ski and stay active. The ski trips to Aspen and Vail were awesome and I hope to do many more.

Unfrozen water is my other love; I’ve been a part of a masters swim team for over 25 years. In 1999, I emerged from the pool to swimming in various bodies of water from the SF Bay to Lake Tahoe to the Aegean Sea.

Outside of skiing and swimming, I keep busy with various volunteer jobs, travel, family and friends, my pets, and my long distance boyfriend Mark. I originally had a career in Human Resources, but have also worked in housing economics, accounting, writing and swim coaching. Now I’m retired from those jobs, and my main task is to enjoy life!

Hi, I’m Tina Woo and recently rejoined Nisei Ski Club this past year to participate in the club’s week- long 60th anniversary trip to Vail, Colorado. Following this trip, Sandy Kiyomura contacted me to see if I would be willing to volunteer assisting in the membership role. I joined the club in 2004 and 2005, probably as a result of attending a dance at the Buddhist Temple and recall the earlier days of ski waxing workshops, making tempura for the Obon festival, dances and bus trips.

One of my goals for the club will be to maintain our current membership base and recruiting new members. The Bay Area has so much to offer in terms of cultural events and festivals, musical performances, museums, biking and hiking trails, attending a Giant’s game, camping, kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, dragon boat paddling, visiting one of Hoyt’s restaurant reviews, to name a few. If you would like to suggest a possible event for the club, please let me know. Send email to membership@niseiskiclub.org.

Hi, my name is Rick Dumlao. I joined the Nisei Ski Club in 2012. I was introduced to the club by Armand, our honorable club president. I started skiing at the late age of 25 then I took up snowboarding about 10 years ago. I would consider myself somewhere between an intermediate and an advanced rider. Attending the club’s week long ski trips for the last five years is always one of my highlights of the year for me. Previously I had been with another ski club called Crash and Burn until it was discontinued. I find the Nisei Ski Club much better suited to my liking with membership I can relate to. As I mentioned, Armand brought me into the club but we also had other things in common at the time. We used to work for the same company and we also share the skies flying hang gliders in the summer as well as enjoying the snow in the winter. I’m looking forward to contributing to the Nisei Ski Club as a new member of the board in any way I can.

We choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort.

Barack Obama

Hoyt Nelson

In the next few issues, I will talk about restaurants – mostly in the South Bay area. I’ve been “collecting” restaurants and sending short reviews to friends for over 50 years. My wife and I always have our antennae open for new, interesting places and when confronted with choices between an old favorite and a new place that looks interesting, we usually go to the new place. We usually like ethnic places and rarely pay more than $20 for a meal. It’s a moving target to find good places since new places are always popping up, old ones close and places frequently change. We usually get tips from friends and usually check out reviews from YELP and prefer places with at least 25 reviews.

Because we live in the South Bay, most places are within reach of our area, although we have a section of special places out of range of this area. You may not like all the same places as we do because of differences in your tastes, the particular dish, whether it’s lunch or dinner, the day of the week, etc. When in doubt, I suggest you learn more before choosing by reading YELP reviews. (The ratings are YELP’s ($ and *). Also, feel free to contact me for more details (and to tell us about your favorite places). Even we, sometimes find disappointments in places at which we have had good meals in the past.

Because my listing usually changes every month, I get sick of re-issuing issues all the time. So now, I am in the process of transferring my review to Google Drive. If you save the link to it, you will always be up to date. My drive location will also include notes on my travels, Bay Area hikes, my personal recipes, and a few of my favorite puzzles. I’m having a few problems since Google does things a little differently than Microsoft. By the next issue of our newsletter, I should have things straightened out. In the future, I hope to add more details on each restaurant, but until then, you will just have to ask me for more details. If there is enough interest in a particular restaurant, we might even organize a trip to it.

Here is this month’s restaurant:

Crepes Bistro

Enough with the preliminaries. One of our latest finds is Crepes Bistro (4.5 *. $$, Gluten-Free, Vegan, 57 Washington St., San Jose, where Washington changes to Bascom, 408-260-6885). It’s just off the Bascom exit from 880 going S. The crepes ($13 – $15.75) are more than large enough for 2 people so I suggest splitting a savory crepe for dinner and splitting a sweet crepe for desert. The crepes are true buckwheat, about 14X 16 and unusually thick at about ¼. Soups, salads, bagels, breakfast items, acai, deserts and drinks are also available. The place is fairly small and nicely decorated with tasteful photos. We enjoyed our first meal there and I look forward to the next.