Walking uphill above Lake Tahoe

The blog is back. I’d like to say “better than ever,” but you’ll have to be the judge of that.

For the past four years, my college buddy Andre and I have gone on late summer jaunts to what we imagine will be cool, new-to-us outdoor destinations. Not because we like hanging out with each other—he ought to be canonized for listening to my jokes and wisecracks for four days, OR he ought to be paying me for that kind of entertainment—but because we don’t know too many people who will leave the comfy coastlines where we dwell full-time (me in San Diego and he in Tampa) to go climb (or bike) up (and then down) mountains. In fact, if you know any leggy supermodel types who enjoy outdoor adventure of this fashion, Andre can be replaced at the drop of a hat, so feel free to spread the word.  

Our annual outdoor travels began in 2008 with a long weekend in Breckenridge, Colorado and a climb to the top of a 14,000-foot peak called Mount Holy-Shit-My-Legs-Are-So-Tired-They-Are-Shaking, which may be known to some by its official name, Mount Quandary. That eight-hour stroll also included a close (but not that close) encounter with a sheep dog...or something in the sheep dog family that I could not identify. The next year we settled on a road trip (for me) to Santa Barbara and a hike up a trail called Rattlesnake Canyon, where we both nearly stomped directly on top of—let the suspense build now—a snake. Shocker, huh? Evidently, the trail name was not a misnomer. (And yes, I wrote that last sentence so I could use the word “misnomer”. I rather like it.) This all occurred while another college buddy, also named Tim, sat under a tree halfway up the trail and waited for us to return from the top. (Nice effort, Delp. Really. Well done.) In 2010, I convinced ’Dre to meet me in Portland, Oregon so we could tackle the Bachelor to Bend mountain bike ride, 25 miles of the sweetest singletrack you’ll ever see. I had a great time. Andre probably would have, too, if his bike didn’t have mechanical problems as we climbed roughly 1,000 feet in elevation for the first hour. It makes for a funny story now, and I was even able to collect a nice photo of him flipping off the camera as our guide worked to fix his bike 600 feet into the climb. Tough break, brother. Try not to be so high maintenance next time, huh. 

 In the words of Queen: "I want to ride my biii-cycle."

As anyone lucky enough to have old friends knows, the great part about meeting up with one that you don’t see often enough is that you instantly pick up where you left off the last time you got together. Or, if you’re exceedingly immature like us, where you left off in the college dorm hallways a dozen or so years earlier. In this case, the last time we saw each other, I was carrying Andre like a wounded marine from the scene of the Gasparilla Day Parade in Tampa because whatever was in the punch bowl was a little too potent for SuperDre on that late January afternoon (and all morning, too; we started at 10:30 a.m.). It was a long walk. A very long walk. As any good friends would do, the other aforementioned Tim and I took the care to stuff Andre in the back seat of Tim’s car face-down. Fearing for his safety—and having great responsibility for our friend—we locked the car doors, told him to stay put and promptly trekked off to a house party that featured two bands in the front yard of a McMansion on Bayshore Boulevard. Andre was still there when we got back; don’t fret. We are friends, after all. We take care of each other. Clearly. I mean we left him face-down.  

There would be none of those shenanigans on this trip to the Lake Tahoe area, however. We were here to breathe some clean air, exercise the legs and enjoy the outdoors. At least until we got to the casinos of South Lake.

As I touched on earlier, there isn’t much you can’t say to a friend you’ve had for 18 years. And so, the banter began with text messages before I got off the plane in Reno while he circled in the rental car. Or, at least made plans to circle in the rental car. 

Me: Landed.

Andre: At a bar. Be there when I finish this. (This was a text with an image of his beer sitting, nearly full, on the bar.)

Me: Seriously?

Andre: Went for a hike this afternoon, saw a snake, turned around, came to this bar.

Me: You went for a hike in 90-degree weather in the desert and saw a snake. And this surprised you? Was it a rattlesnake?
Andre: Was more of a walk than a hike. Not sure what kind of snake.   

Me: Starving. Could eat my arm. Your arm would do. But would rather eat food.

Andre: Bitch, you’re always hungry. Get your bag. Tell me when you’re at baggage.

Me: At baggage. Still hungry. Get in your red Sebring convertible and get over here.   
Andre: You’ll see a white Jeep when you get outside.

Me: And you’ll be in the purple Kia Sportage behind the Jeep, Mr. Manly?
Andre: This is going to be a long week. 

We spent the first two days at the base of a Squaw Valley. For a skier, spending two nights at the base of Squaw Valley when the lifts aren’t spinning and the ground is green is like sending Tiger Woods to an iHop with only male waiters. Clearly, I was making sacrifices here. Still Tahoe is beautiful just about any time of year, and this was confirmed the next morning. 

We awoke Thursday and headed into Tahoe City, about 15 minutes away, for an early morning breakfast at a place called something I can’t remember and am too lazy to look up right now. It was a great spot with old bicycles hanging from the walls and the kind of rustic, mountain décor you hope to see when you stroll into a mountain town breakfast spot; and that should make perfect sense. We were just about the only people in there because September is the “shoulder season” in ski country. 

No bike, no problem. And we're going up there. 

This is a good time to point out that Andre is a very low-maintenance traveling companion. In fact, he’s nearly a masochist. If there are three guys crashing in a hotel room with two beds somewhere, he embraces the floor so quickly you look at the ground twice to make sure it’s not an exotic dancer disguised as carpet. His volunteerism in these situations nearly makes you feel bad for him…until you remember that he, you know, volunteered for it. He is also the safest travel companion you’ve ever met. I should explain that this is mostly due to the fact that he drives like he is blind, which is due mostly to the fact that, without his eyeglasses, he basically IS blind. He pulls into traffic only when it is safe to do so. And by that I mean there are no cars for a half mile. Unless you count Deadliest Catch, I haven’t watched five minutes of “reality” TV since I saw Stacey Keibler on Dancing With the Stars, but I’ve always thought Andre and I could win that show The Amazing Race, hands-down. Now, I’m not so sure. With Ray Charles here at the wheel of anything but a supersonic aircraft, the high-maintenance mother-daughter team that always participates in that show would be pulling away from us. But I digress. 

Shirley Lake. Well worth the walk. 

After fueling up on pancakes and eggs, we drove around a bit before heading back to Squaw for a hike up to (don’t call me) Shirley Lake. The four-mile trail headed out of the Village at Squaw through big pines, past a mountain stream with small waterfalls, and then climbed dramatically up over a massive rock field. It was a perfect early autumn day, with temperatures in the 70s and that bright blue sky Tahoe is famous for. We scrambled over large rock formations and eventually found Shirley Lake, a picturesque setting surrounded by lush green trees and vegetation. A few folks were swimming in what had to be a very chilly (don’t call me) Shirley Lake. It was the perfect place to spend an afternoon NOT with another dude. But anyway…



We hiked back down, stopping to take the plunge in a swimming hole that pooled under cascading water. There isn’t a proper way for me to describe just how cold this mountain stream felt as I lowered myself into it—particularly the groinal section—but it was refreshing. After a burger at Hennessey’s Tavern in the village, we headed back into Tahoe City for a couple of beers before retiring back to our hotel. At least that was the plan, until we heard the sound of fun spilling out of the cantina across the parking lot from our hotel. You know the distinct sound of fun, right? Who doesn’t know what FUN sounds like?

Somehow, 45 minutes later, I found myself sitting at a dive bar with the bartender’s pug (that’s a small dog, I’m pretty sure) sitting on my lap sneering at me. We were surrounded by mountain workers from Squaw, snowmakers, and possibly pro snowboarders. The girl to my left was some kind of artist who would be showing her artwork in a local gallery over the upcoming weekend. Andre began to secretly call her “Halfpint” because the bartender would only serve her half-full glasses of beer due to her advanced level of intoxication, and I hope you saw that joke coming. (By the way, if your bartender does this to you, this is a bad sign. It’s time for some self-examination…or a smaller glass.)

Shrinkage!

At one point, Halfpint Van Goh started calling Andre “Disney” because he lives in Florida. Halfpint started this nicknaming train of thought with a line of questioning about whether or not he worked at Disney (he doesn’t), as if everyone who lives in Florida is employed by Disney World. To which I replied, “No, he works at Epcot Center. He’s worldly.” She didn’t get it. This did not surprise us.

Let’s get back to the bartender’s dog, which was sporting a spike collar and four teeth, all of which were visible when his mouth was closed, making him falsely intimidating for an 18-inch furball. The bartender was a very attractive married mother of a college student, who she must have given birth to at the age of nine. She told us she had been “all around the word, but always came back here to Tahoe because there’s nothing like it.”
“Where have you been?” I ask.

“Sorry? What?”

“You said you’ve been all around the world, so where have you been?”

“Oh, well, I spent 12 days at Carnival in Brazil, which was crazy. I’ve been to London, and Canada…”

“Canada?” I say.

“Yeah. Canada.”
“Ummm, you can’t say I’ve been all around the world and then drop a ‘Canada’ in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s Canada. It’s right there.” (Me kind of pointing toward the ceiling and what I think is north of the barstool I’m sharing with her lap dog.)

“Canada is 45 miles from the house I grew up in,” Andre adds in my support.

“Canada doesn’t count in the I’ve-been-all-around-the-world story,” I say.

I mean, seriously, that’s like saying you’re Harvard-educated because you took driving school lessons in Cambridge.

She laughed at this whole shady, self-boasting travel thing she had going on, agreed with us, and offered us more beer. We said yes. And everyone was happy. Even the dog with the spike collar was happy—probably because he was now drinking beer from a shot glass I was holding.

We left the cantina just before things could get carried away with the Pabst Blue Ribbon that Squaw Valley is famous for, or so they told us, and were up early the next morning for breakfast at another local café in Tahoe City with plenty of character. I started by ordering a breakfast sandwich with egg, cheese and sausage. And said please when I did so.

“I’ll will have the egg, cheese and bacon, please,” Andre says. “Appreciate that!” He always says please and thank you in an overly polite manner because he’s from Vermont and this is what people from Vermont do when they aren’t tipping cattle late at night or eating Vermont cheddar cheese (it has to be from Vermont) and drinking Long Trail Ales after (or while) driving home in their Volvos with a fresh batch of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

“Good call!” the young girl behind the counter says to him. 

“Whoa! What's so great about the bacon?” I ask her, kind of kidding, but worried I’m missing out by going with the sausage. 

“It’s just good. It’s pepper bacon.”

“And the sausage?”

“It’s pretty good.”

“Give me the bacon. I’ll take a lot of bacon. Lay it on me.”

And we got a boatload of bacon on our respective egg sandwiches. And it was very good. And it was peppery. And we were happy. 

Emerald Bay. See what I mean? Spectacular. 

We hopped in the white jeep and drove south through a beautiful pine forest, zigzagging against the lakeshore down past spectacular Emerald Bay in the southwest corner of the lake. Emerald Bay is the type of place that actually looks as good as it does in postcards and Chamber of Commerce pamphlets. If you go to Tahoe, drive by it. How’s that for a travel tip? Clear enough?

After a six-hour hike up and down Mount Talac, which afforded sweeping, spectacular views of Tahoe and the Desolation Wilderness Area—from the sound of it, surely not a place you want to get stuck—we headed into South Lake Tahoe to recover with a couple of nights of social activity. On the last few minutes of the drive (if 45 minutes is “a few”) we sat in traffic while the California Department of Transportation did what they do best—cause massive traffic jams and leave no alternative routes. It was at this point that a bluegrass song came on the radio and I discovered that, even if you’re moving 3 m.p.h., bluegrass music still makes you feel as though you’re being chased. Doesn’t this just make you feel like you should be getting chased? Maybe by the cops on Dukes of Hazzard.  

Yeah, I thought so.

Side note here: I’m not doing justice to the hike up Mount Talac, but it was six hours of walking and this is getting long enough and I don’t want to skip over the Oktoberfest we went to. Look at the pictures of the hike; these should sum it up.   

     

The final highlight of the weekend was an Octoberfest that Andre planned for us to attend at the legendary Mont Bleu Casino. I’ve never been to the real Oktoberfest, but I would say that it is on my barrel list—that’s the stuff that isn’t quite important enough for you to put on your bucket list, but you’d do it if the opportunity arose. I just made that up that “barrel list” thing. Feel free to use it at cocktail parties. Or future Oktoberfests at the Mont Bleu Casino.  

Most Oktoberfest I’ve been dragged to in the U.S. are populated by what I’d kindly call an interesting batch of humanity. They seem to generally include old folks who like to drink beer, old folks who love to eat massive amounts of brats and other fattening and filling food, and then young people with the same affinities for beer—and, to a lesser extent, food. There is often an old guy who can shotgun a beer faster than anyone you knew in college and a band that plays old German songs with a bit too much gusto. In the case of the Mont Bleu Octoberfest, the German family band played such traditional Bavarian hits as: “I Don't Want Her, You Can Have Her, She's Too Fat For Me”. They also seemed to get by on a lot of songs that were rooted in Johnny Cash tunes and then dropped in that old German standby, “The Chicken Dance”, which the two casino-paid, go-go dancers on either side of the stage were happy to perform in their lederhosen.

By the end of the evening, all that remained on the dance floor were three guys—and they appeared to be of African American, Indian and Asian descent. So, to recap: at an Oktoberfest celebrating German heritage, we had three guys dominating the dance floor who would likely have been ethnically cleansed out of Hitler’s Germany. One guy was wearing the San Francisco Giants game jersey of baseball Hall of Famer Willie McCovey, who is, as far as I know, still African-American. Throw in a few Jews and we've got a real Octoberfest, right? “Epstein! Seinfeld! Rosenberg! Get in there! It’s a dance party.”

Let’s end on that note. Thanks for reading.
Sorry, but you can’t have that time back. It’s gone forever.