this morning was dedicated to mountain biking-shweeet! so i consult the handy-dandy guide book to see how to ride to squaw valley, home of the 1960 winter (duh) olympics. lo and behold there's a dedicated bike trail called the truckee recreational trail. 4.9 miles from tahoe city to squaw. i don the monkey suit (my teammates refer to it as the barney costume due to it's garish displays of purple-ouch!) and kick on down highway 89 to tahoe city onwards to sqizzy-squaw. it follows the truckee river which originates in tahoe city now being controlled by a dam. the trail's filled with families cycling so i say something encouraging as i pedal on by them. in the motherland-colorado-i'm assuming most ski areas are open to mountain bikers; therefore, california ski areas must be too. i get to the base at squaw and it's eerily devoid of any cycling activity. i spy a nice, juicy trail heading upwards and i ask a worker bee if this trail hooks up with a maintenance road to the top. he replies, "there hasn't been any mountain biking here for the past 5 years ever since a cyclist hurt himself pretty bad." back in my mind i hear the charlie brown wahhhhh, wahhhhh, wahhhhhh whenever charlie self-mulliganed. how LAY-YUM is that!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was so psyched to tear some squaw valley terrain up and now this?! it's like, when you're supremely hungry, ordering a nice, juicy, veggie burrito and hunkering down on it and finding out it's a garlic, mayonnaise, and tapetum lucidum (it's what causes light to bounce from certain mammals' eyes and allows them wicked night vision) from the eye-balls of bovines-flavored. incidentally, the wahhhhh, wahhhhhhh, wahhhhhh sound it a trumpet (or coronet) blasting onto a the surface of water (as if in a fishbowl). the sound waves are muted because it's randomly bouncing off the surface of the water (due to water's adhesive and cohesive forces, and yes, i'm a geek). from that point on, my reptilian brain stem was in a f-bomb tape loop, slowly stewing and fermenting, poisoning my mellow-self, ready to pop and unleash holeee verbal hell if someone were to ask me what i'm doing here with a bike.
i head back to tahoe city, still in disbelief, go back up the granlibakken resort and do yesterday's ride in reverse. to spite squaw resorts, i did not buy a cheesy, touristy cotton-poly blend t-shirt. so there squaw valley wankers!
hooked up with my ass-kicking family and decompressed at meek's beach. the rains fell and we spontaneously decided to make a field trip to south tahoe, home of the '07 fires, heavenly ski resort (owned by vail and associates), and gambling. on the way there, highway 89 went on a ridge temporarily and on either side we saw lake tahoe on the left, and cascade and fallen leaf lakes (pictured). it was visually stunning and for i got a picosecond's worth of vertigo. strange.
at s. tahoe i scored a cheesy, touristy, cotton-poly blend t-shirt with characters assembled in this sequence, going left to right, h-e-a-v-e-n-l-y displayed where one's pectoral muscles would go. since this joint was owned by vail and associates it was formulaicly touristy yet mildly enjoyable (kinda like your date on ketamine). did you know, that at homewood resort kids ski free if they're less than or equal to 10 years of age? betcha didn't know that...
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