Hello Everyone! Well, it’s definitely been a weird and challenging week out here. Nothing went as planned, but everything has worked out okay, at least for now. I had already left Lake Tahoe when I wrote this post last week, but when the master cylinder went on my van I headed back to the lake and spent the week with friends while I waited for it to be fixed. I got it back on Monday and then had to make a beeline for the Bay Area to get to the office in time to start my season. And I did make it, so that’s a good thing, and I will take out my first trip of the year this Friday. It wasn’t the week I had hoped for, but sometimes that’s what happens out here on the road.
After I finished this post last week, I went and had a nice lunch at the Truckee Airport with an old guiding friend of mine, Mike. I met Mike when I first started my guiding job back in 2000 and we worked for the same company for many years. He currently owns Tahoe-Sierra Transport Company which shuttles clients around the Reno and Lake Tahoe areas. We had some interesting Mexican/Indian fusion tacos and caught up for a little over an hour and it was really nice to see him. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Truckee and taking photos. It’s a really cool little town with some great old buildings and everyone seemed pretty friendly. In the evening I went to a place called RMU which is a bar in a nice old house on the edge of downtown. I enjoyed some live music and a couple of beers and chatted with some of the locals. Truckee doesn’t allow overnight parking in the winter, but since it was after April 30th, I stayed in one of the downtown lots overnight with no problems.
On Thursday morning I got up early and had a nice breakfast at a little family-owned coffee shop on the main drag. I took some more photos and then headed just outside of town to Donner Memorial State Park. This is the site where the Donner party spent the winter of 1846-47. I think most of us know this story, at least to some extent, because of the cannibalism that took place as the winter wore on, but I didn’t know much beyond that. It seems like they made some bad decisions along the way, none of which seemed particularly hard to understand in context. The Donners and several other families headed west in the spring of 1846, hoping to make it to California before the winter. Traveling with covered wagons along rough trails was slow going and they only averaged 2 miles an hour on their journey. At one point they decided to take a “shortcut” from the accepted route and this seems to have been their fatal mistake. They got to the valley where Reno is now and could have safely stayed there until spring, but chose to push forward and try and get through the mountains before the snows came. They were only a couple of weeks’ walk from their destination in the central valley and were desperate to start their new lives. The snows came early that winter and didn’t let up for months, stranding them just a week’s walk from safety in either direction. They dug in and did their best and rescue parties eventually came to get them out. It wasn’t until after the first groups had been rescued that they came to the decision to eat their dead comrades. 87 people walked into the mountains with the Donners that winter and only 48 came out alive. The whole story is obviously a sad one, but it is interesting to learn about.
As I was leaving the park on my way up into the mountains, I stepped on the brakes and my foot went down to the floor with the ABS and Parking Brake lights coming on at the same time. Brakes are obviously not to be messed with, especially when I had mountains to cross. I immediately texted my friend Mike who I had met with the day before and he called his local mechanic shop and connected me with them. I headed over there and they said they could get to it the next day. Then I called my friend J.D. who I had been staying with in Tahoe City and he came up immediately and picked me up and brought me back to his place. Tragically, while all of this was going on, J.D.’s grandmother’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he knew he was going to have to head home to Ohio. I was glad I could be there to spend time with him in that moment and help him get his flight out. He left me in his place and told me to stay as long as I needed which was beyond kind, but that’s the kind of friend he is. Later that afternoon, I connected with another friend, Pete, who had run a trip with me almost a decade ago in the mountains of New England. He and his wife now own an awesome little store called the Trunk Show right there in Tahoe City. It was nice to meet his wife and we hung out and had a couple of beers and gave J.D. some space to figure out what he needed to do.
He got on a flight first thing in the morning and did make it home to Ohio to spend some time with his grandmother before she passed away which was really important. I hung around Tahoe City on Friday, waiting to hear back about my van. When I did hear back, they needed to order a part so they weren’t going to be able to get it back to me before Monday. When that news came down, Pete offered to bring me back to their house in Reno so I could have some company and not just be stuck in Tahoe City. I took him up on that and we headed down the mountain after he closed up the shop. When we got there, Pete pulled the cover off of his 1963 Cadillac and we went for a cruise downtown. We stopped in and had an amazing Mexican dinner and then met up with some people over at a bar nearby. Two of the people we met up with were also old tour leaders from the same company and their wives were there as well. They invited me to a party on Saturday and then we played some pinball and chatted away the evening.
On Saturday morning, Kristi headed up to Tahoe City to open their store and Pete and I went for a walk down by the river which was really high because of all the snowmelt, but also really nice. Then we headed over to a little art show where some of his friends were working on murals. Since Pete’s shop specializes in local art, he made some good connections at the show and I enjoyed looking around as well. We headed back to their house for a burger and a nap and then Kristi came home and we all headed over to the party. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of new people who were all very kind and welcoming. We drank wine and enjoyed some food and the weather was perfect to sit outside and talk the night away. Two days earlier I had been broken down in a strange town and two days later I was at a party with old and new friends. Between that and being there for J.D. to help him out, it almost seemed like the whole thing had been planned.
We hung out for a while on Sunday morning and then I rode back up to Tahoe City with Pete. It was clear on the ride up the mountain, but there were some pretty dark clouds over the lake when we got there. The rains came in late morning - excellent weather to watch TV and take a nap which is exactly what I did. I went out in the afternoon to take some photos and then caught up with Pete when he closed up the store. We went and grabbed a couple of beers overlooking the lake and then said our goodbyes as he headed on home. It was great to reconnect with him after so many years and he and Kristi really helped me out in a bind. I went down to the Tahoe Taphouse for some dinner and live music and then called it an early night.
I was up on Monday and headed down to the lake to take some photos in the morning fog. I stopped into the grocery store to grab some fruit and sat by the lake to enjoy it. After my breakfast I went back to J.D.’s and cleared the perishables out of his fridge and took out his trash and watered his plants. Then I locked up his place and took off. I wanted to get back to Truckee so that I was there when they got my van finished. Thankfully there is a free bus that runs a few times a day from the transit center so I hopped on that and made my way back up the road. When I got to the shop they told me that they had switched the master cylinder but that one of the bleeder valves on my caliper was frozen and they couldn’t get all of the air out of the system. It would stop, but it would be spongy until I could get that fixed. I told them I absolutely had to be back in San Francisco that night and they told me they had their best guy working on it. Whatever he did worked and I pulled out a little after 4, hopped on the interstate and headed west towards the coast. I got to San Francisco just before 8 and pulled down to Pacifica right as the sun was setting. Pacifica is a great little beach town with a couple of friendly bars and a safe place to park for the night. I was really glad I made it but I was tired and went to bed nice and early.
I had planned on having almost a week to clean my van up and pack my things for the upcoming season, but that week had quickly turned into a single morning. I was up early and started in on it and after a couple of hours I felt like I was getting there. Around 11 I headed up to my company’s new office and dropped off most of my gear. The new space is so much bigger and better than where we were last year and I was excited to see it, but I also had plenty left to do so I headed out around noon. I had reserved a parking space for the summer at a storage place out in Dublin and wanted to go out and get all of the paperwork out of the way early. When I arrived, they told me they did not have a space for me. They had my reservation clear as day, but they didn’t have a spot. It didn’t matter what I said or how upset I was, he just kept saying there was nothing he could do. At some point I simply gave up and left. I drove around to all of the local storage spots, but they were all full. I spent some time looking online, and found a place in Oakland which seemed pretty affordable so I headed up there. After seeing it, there was simply no way I was going to leave my van in that place. It was so unsecure that I couldn’t even imagine it lasting through the night. The day was wearing on, but I had to find somewhere. I ended up finding a place in San Leandro which wasn’t perfect (or cheap), but it seemed safe for now and the people were friendly. I really wish the first place had kept the spot they had promised me as it would have saved me a lot of hassle, time and money. I finally got my van secured and hopped on the train into the city. Of course the 26 minute ride turned into an hour when the train got delayed – it simply wasn’t my day. Thankfully when I arrived there was a friendly and familiar face to greet me at my hotel. I went around the corner to my favorite little Pakistani restaurant and then for a beer at my favorite little neighborhood bar. By the time I went to sleep I was feeling a little better.
Today I headed back to the office for my first real day of work. In all of the kerfuffle I had missed my DMV physical but thankfully I could get that done when I went for my drug test this morning. I sat down with my manager for a while in the afternoon to discuss my upcoming trips and then spent the rest of the day going through all of my camping equipment. It felt good to be there and to be back to work and it’s always good to see some familiar faces. I left work a little late but I wanted to finish this up before dinnertime so here I am. I certainly didn’t see or do all of the things I had hoped to with the last week of my off-season, but it sure could have been worse, all things considered. I made it here in the end.
Tomorrow I will finish up my office work and head to the grocery store to shop for my trip that leaves on Friday. It will be a three day camping tour to Yosemite which should be interesting with all of the snow and road closures in the park. I’ve done this trip several times before, but this one will definitely be different. But the waterfalls will be going strong, the bear cubs will be tiny and I’m really looking forward to getting back to the park. I spent a lot of time there last summer and was happy to take a break from it for a while, but now I’m pretty excited to head back. I’ll be back in San Francisco on Sunday night and then will have a few days to sort out my next trip which will take me out to the desert for a couple of weeks and end in Las Vegas. I’m really looking forward to that as well. I do hope to be able to write this post again next week, but the summer is about to get really busy. I still have a lot of photos to get published from the winter, too, so stay tuned for some more California pics and some new ones from my upcoming trips as well. Have a great week out there, wherever you are, and I hope to see you right back here, same time next week. Thanks, as always, for reading.
-Mike