The Fourth of July at Squaw Valley and Kailua-Kona

The Fourth of July at Squaw Valley, starring Victoria Gerrassimenko.

The Fourth of July at Squaw Valley sounds like a perfect place to be this time of year. Josh Amolsch from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team and his girlfriend, Vika Gerrassimenko, were on vacation at Lake Tahoe and spent the 4th of July snowboarding. It was warm there, too, although not as warm as where I was in Hawaii.

I mentioned to Josh that I might be too old to try snowboarding. While I can live vicariously through Josh and his 4th of July at Squaw Valley, it’s not a sport I will ever take up. I can paddleboard, though. Put a plus check mark in the sport box for me.  Learned how to paddleboard in Hawaii. They say women make better stand-up  paddleboarders because our center of gravity is lower, so we can more easily maintain our balance.

Paddleboarding, for me, almost didn’t happen. I tried a bunch of times, and I could not stand up. My husband wasn’t faring any better. He headed to shore. I almost gave up, but then I said, you know, I’m gonna give this one more try. And voila! I stood up, and ever since, I’ve never had a problem.

Josh Amolsch from the Elizabeth Weintraub Team celebrated the Fourth of July at Squaw Valley.

People give up on things too easily. You can get anything you want through perseverance. That’s a fact, Jack. You gotta really want it though. I did not want to learn how to ski. That’s what Josh said he sees old people do, instead of snowboarding, they ski. I tried twice and it was one time too many. But that’s because I did not want to learn how to ski. I tried to do it to appease a couple of men, because they wanted me to do it. Which is stupid, stupid, stupid.

The first time was with my third husband. I have wedding photos showing me wearing a Southern Belle white wedding dress, accentuated by ski boots. I fell down a number of times. Wasn’t even drunk but wish I had been. I tried again with another boyfriend who was an enthusiast, and let’s just say when my cat Brandon urinated on the bag holding his skis, I should have taken that as a sign. I was young and foolish. I may still be foolish but I’m not young anymore.

Vika Gerassimenko snowboarding on the Fourth of July in Squaw Valley.

Then you look at Josh’s girlfriend, Victoria. I swear, she cannot take a bad photo. The woman is beautiful. And smart. She could stumble off a red-eye flight and still look gorgeous.

So they spent the 4th of July at Squaw Valley snowboarding. It was warm enough to wear a swimsuit, which apparently some people did. Look at Josh in shorts in the photo up above.

Below is my photograph of my 4th of July in Kailua-Kona. Our vacation house sits just up the hill, a straight line from the beach at a higher elevation. When the fireworks went off, I had a front row balcony view. The finale was pretty cool, but it’s hard to take photos of fireworks with an iPhone. Where that lower pink light explodes, that’s into the horizon of the ocean.

Fireworks in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on the Fourth of July.