Thursday, Tahoe and Driving home

Thursday I did another ride to Ocean Beach. It has become a positive little addiction for me.

On Friday I got out of work at 12pm and took the BART (see photo) to the Ashby station in the East bay to meet up with my good friend/Needle Exchange enthusiast/Snow Board teacher/ Only Asian Friend/Ride to Tahoe. I've been a little more than lucky to meet this girl, as she is intelligent and interesting and carts my ass up to Tahoe for snow boarding trips. We call her Jules up in Tahoe, but she keeps signing her e-mails "Julie". Could that be a hint? Nah.

Why am I writing about a boarding trip in my ALC6 training blog? Well, I want to give everyone a sense that I am working hard toward becoming physically able to tackle this bike trip. The training does require a bit of crossover to other activities, like board sports (surfing, boarding, etc...). Boarding actually uses secondary leg muscles I need to strengthen for biking.

Anyway, I always have a grande ol' time when I venture up to South Lake Tahoe. Ally is there and, with great generosity, houses me and whomever I bring. She also hooks us up with some of the best food I've ever had, e.g. our dinner at the Chart House on Saturday night.

The snow in Tahoe was essentially ice. I fell three times on my right knee on Sunday. It soon thereafter became swollen. As Jules described it, "It looks like you have an extra knee cap." Gross. Lucky, it healed quickly and as not affected my cycling. The rain we are finally getting is, however.

We've have had some sort of mini drought out here. I heard on NPR's "Living on Earth" podcast that the snow pack in the Sierras is 57% lower than normal. That was certainly evident up on the Mountain. Saturday morning, as Ally, Jules and I were taking the Gondola up to 8,000ft, Ally remarked that she had not seen this little snow in all her three seasons there. Indeed, there was almost no snow at all. The ground was sandy and bare rock warmed in the sun.

After watching the super bowl Jules and I drove home. Well, Jules drove and I struggled to stay awake.

There is something surreal about the drive from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco. You start in the Tahoe basin, a giant bowl of 3 shades blue water guarded by mountains on all sides. The forests that skirt the mountains and blanket the basin have an unusual homogeneity, consisting of mostly Ponderosa Pine. At lake level it is about 5,500ft above sea level. CA route 50 makes its way through the Sierras that stand between the basin and the western foot hills. The pass brings you to 8,000ft before declining finally into the foot hills and Sacramento area. After shedding off the foot hills, you find the forest thickening and other tree species appear--the pines fall away behind you. Just outside of Sacramento, a mere hour and a half after leaving Tahoe, Palm trees pop up on the margins of highways and adorn the landscaping of box stores. These are the thoughts that run through my East-coast mind, "Palm trees don't belong so close to places where snow is. No. Does not compute." Seeing as I had not seen a palm tree until I was 22 during a road trip to Florida (22 hour drive) with the Top Cats, the proximately of the two here and now seemed monumentally unfair. Also, it brought home to me in a big way that I was, I am, in a different world.

The land flattens down near Sacramento in to a broad wet valley with rivers and marshes. Hitting the beginnings of the Bay Area, the hills timidly reappear as waves of grassy round mounts. They increase in amplitude and stripes of trees sprout from the narrow hollows between them. High voltage towers adorn their rounded tops--the only indication, at points, that you are entering a seriously populated area.

Then you across the Fairfield bridge in the North Bay and enter Contra Costa, and you are in the land of highways and humans. The 880, 780, 580, 280, 80, 101, huge ports and 6.7 million people. Palm trees everywhere and not a flake of snow. Total trip time: 3 hours.

We used to travel 3 hours to visit my grandparents in New Hampshire. Guess how many palm trees I saw. Zero. Guess what the temperature was: the same as Maine. So strange, so strange.