Hi Gram!
I’m having such an amazing time! I was thinking yesterday that I only have about a month left on my trip, and that seems so short, but then I realized I’ve only been gone for about a month so far. I’ve had so many experiences and seen so many people, it feels like it’s been months or even years! I’m glad I was able to take the trip and can’t wait to see what the next few weeks bring me.
I got into Oakland on Sunday afternoon, and headed to my friend Leah’s house. Leah is the first person I met when I went to orientation at Bradley University after high school. We were a couple of scared kids, away from home and trying to figure out this scary new college experience we’d be having in the fall. We went from seminar to seminar together, learning about the dorms, cafeteria, class buildings, extracurricular activities, etc for a few days. Orientation ended at the required dance to encourage these incoming freshmen to mingle. Neither of us were much for dancing back then, so we were wall flowers together and chatted some more. The next day, everyone headed home and I realized that I’d never gotten her phone number or anything, and had no idea how I was going to find her when school started up again. As luck turns out, after I had moved into my dorm and was walking around the welcoming picnic, I saw her sitting on the grass and joined her. We’ve been friends ever since. She and her husband live in Oakland now, where they’re both computer administrators. It was great seeing Leah again and meeting her husband, whom I’d heard about for years but never actually met. We sat around talking into the evening before we were all tired and headed to bed. I could sleep as late as I wanted in the morning, but they had to be up for work.
I slept in a little the next morning, then sat around reading and working on my computer for most of the morning and early afternoon. When I was hungry for lunch, I looked on Google maps and found a quaint-sounding little restaurant a few miles away. As I started driving there, though, the neighborhood was going downhill. The neat little manicured houses on the hill turned to boarded up shacks with overgrown lawns. Bus stops had graffiti sprayed on them, cars were missing wheels, and the pedestrians changed. Businessmen walking to the bus stop or moms herding their kids down the sidewalk became punks leaning against a street sign glaring at passersby. By the time I got to the restaurant, I didn’t feel safe. I thought that parking my car with out-of-state plates and luggage box on top was just screaming for vandals to hit the easy tourist target, so I kept driving and headed the other direction.
I soon found a joint selling Louisiana fried chicken. They had a machine on display that was used to batter and fry the chicken back in the day, and a simple menu. I got a couple pieces, some corn bread, and a piece of homemade cake for dessert. When I told Zibby about it that night, she teased me that I’d gone all the way to California for Louisiana fried chicken. I walked around the neighborhood for a while, checking out the shops before I headed back to Oakland.
Tuesday, I did a little laundry and some more reading, glad to be at a friend’s house and out of the hotels for a few days. Leah and I decided to head to one of her favorite Thai places for lunch, and finding that one closed we headed to a newer place she wanted to check out. I enjoyed driving around and catching up on old times with a friend I’ve known for a quarter century. We had some unique situations in our college days, like when we used to throw get-togethers in my dorm room. The university didn’t allow room parties, so we re-named my room “the park” and hosted “picnics” most weekends, where we’d have 10-20 of our friends sitting around, playing music, and drinking really cheap wine coolers and fruit wine. We thought we were so clever with our code word “picnic” instead of party, but we never got shut down and I barely got in trouble the following week. We sat around recounting memories and devouring our curry and salad for a while, then headed home.
I checked the weather up the mountain, and we had a few sunny days ahead, so I packed the car and pointed it for Lake Tahoe. Now I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, Grandma, but I LOVE driving through tunnels. It brought me such joy when I was a truck driver, and I’ve loved them ever since. I don’t know what it is, but I just get giddy like a toddler at Disneyworld when I see that I’m going to drive through a tunnel. I’ve driven through a few of them on this trip, and came across a really long tunnel on my way out of town.
I was expecting some traffic in the bay area, but didn’t come across much of anything. I cruised through Sacramento pretty easily, and drove through some beautiful farmland on my way to the mountain. When I think of California, I always think of the congested cities that have spread and sprawled into one another, like L.A., San Diego, and the entire bay area. I forget that a lot of California is just farms and ranches like it is back home, but with more interesting terrain. I was surrounded by greenery for most of the drive up, then it went very quickly to a dusting of snow, then drifts a few feet high and finally drifts that were higher than my car. Before I left, I looked up road conditions and saw that chains were required if you didn’t have all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive with snow tires. I have AWD and snow tires, and my car has some clearance to handle snow on the road. I was surprised, though, by how many little cars with practically no clearance and no chains were trying to fight their way up through the snow. Every few miles, I’d pass a little car on the side of the road, some of them in a ditch, some had been there for a while, buried by the plows. I passed a few that had pulled over to put the chains on, and were clearly unfamiliar with the process. I shook my head and trudged on for the last few miles as we formed a train of slow moving SUVs and trucks, climbing our way up the hills, then tip-toeing down the steep grades between enormous snow drifts on either side of the road. I made my way to the Hard Rock hotel on the Nevada side of town, looking forward to staying in a nice hotel for only $62. They’re a few blocks from the gondola at Heavenly resort, where I’d be snowboarding the next day, and I was excited to have a nice room and check out the casino. When I went in to book a room, though, I was disappointed to find out that on top of taxes, they had a “resort fee” and some other “convenience fees” that doubled the price of the room. If they’d advertised the room at the full price, I probably would have been happy to pay it because of all the amenities. But I wasn’t going to get suckered in with a low price and have them double it with dishonesty. I walked out and went looking for somewhere better. I found a motel across the street from the gondola, checked in, and prepped my gear for the next day.
Wednesday morning, I geared up and headed for the gondola. It starts running at 8:30, but there was already a line at 8:15 when I got there. I grabbed a warm breakfast sandwich at the cafe next door, then got in line and chatted with some of the other visitors while we waited for operations to begin. Once at the top, I headed for a chairlift nearby and started weaving up and down across different runs. Most of the runs were groomed and smooth riding, and the lift lines were short enough that I never felt like I was waiting.
I’d just warmed up in the lodge, and with some bravery built up, I took a lift up and started down a groomed run. I was cruising along when I saw the trees thin a little, exposing a path across fresh unridden powder over to another groomed run. I built up a little speed, excited to put down some fresh tracks across untouched terrain. I hopped up a little snow ramp and started cruising across the buttery soft powder, leaning back to keep the nose of my board above the snow. The path was a little longer and flatter than I thought, though, and I started running out of steam. About 3/4 of the way across, I puttered to a stop and fell over. I got the board off to walk out of there, and sank to my waist in soft fluffy snow! Laughing, I did my best to get on top of the snow and work my way over to the groomed run where I’d find firmer packed snow. I kind of rolled, shuffled, clawed my way around, looking like a fish on the dock, flopping back and forth trying to get to water. Now, snowboard pants are waterproof and have a gaiter that pulls over the boots to keep the snow out. I don’t always pull the gaiter down over my boots, though, and this was one of those days. I had snow packed down into every nook and cranny of my boots, down along my ankles and on top of both feet. Snow had worked it’s way up my pant leg over my socks all the way up to my knees. By the time I got to firm ground, I strapped the board back on and headed for the lodge to warm up.
With all that snow, I knew I might get warm but I wasn’t going to be dry until I changed out of these clothes. I worked my way back to the gondola and headed down the hill, glad that my hotel was just across the street. After a hot shower, I put on some warm dry socks and clothes and walked down the street for lunch. I found a cantina serving some unusual tacos and ordered one with Thai chicken and another with sweet potatoes and bacon. Both were large and delicious and they hit the spot. I spent the rest of the day checking out some shops and chatting with people along the way, then decided to walk down to the casinos. I’m not much of a gambler, but with all the glitz and bells and whistles, I figured I could entertain myself for a little while. I was disappointed to find out they had shows most nights, but mid-week in February wasn’t prime time for them, so I was out of luck there. I pumped a few dollars into the slot machines at the first casino, then headed across the street. The second casino reminded me of walking into a desolate forgotten lounge that the 70’s had forgotten. I expected tumbleweeds to roll past as the flickering fluorescent bulbs cast a yellowish glow on everything. I did one lap around the place and decided it would be more fun to go back to the hotel. After a quick detour to the grocery store for some cookies, I found my way back to the hotel and watched a little TV. In the morning, I headed to Sacramento for a brief stop. I got a picture with Whiskey Pete, looked at a few shops, then headed to Mountain View to see some other college friends. Kevin and Dave were roommates in the dorms and later got an apartment together. Kevin started dating Caryn and Dave paired up with Gina, and the four of them became inseparable through college and eventually moved out to the bay area together. We all gathered at Kevin and Caryn’s house for pizza to catch up on our lives and meet their kids. We had some good fun watching the kids try to stump their Google digital assistant, playing the age old game of “so, have you talked to so-and-so lately?”, and telling stories of what we’ve been up to lately. They all had to work in the morning, and I was tired from the drive, so we bid adieu and I headed back to Oakland.
It was raining on Friday morning, which allowed me to get a little reading done. Leah and Aiken had just bought a travel trailer to do a little weekend traveling, but neither of them have ever backed a trailer before. When the rain cleared up for a bit, Aiken and I headed outside so he could practice backing the trailer and I tried to give him some tips and guidance. Living in Oakland, they’re naturally on a narrow hilly street with obstacles all around their driveway. We had to snake the truck and trailer downhill backward in a sort of s-turn, toward the blind side, then uphill into the driveway with the house on one side of the driveway and the neighbor’s hedges on the other side. We figured out some markers of what he should be seeing at different stages, and I watched as he tried, pulled out, then tried again. He was just starting to get it when the rain came back and we decided to stop for a while. We headed to lunch at a local diner, where the milkshakes were enormous but delicious. Neither of us like the rain, so we hid out in the diner for a little while before making a run for the car and heading back to the house. I cleaned up the room a little before heading to get Zibby from the airport. I’ll tell you all about our adventures together next time!