Lake Tahoe Vacation Hangover.....

Had 4 perfect days in Tahoe this past weekend. Flew back late last night into the rain, and it's been raining ever since. Friday Krisine and I went out for a boat ride with her parents, Rich and Carol. Scoped out a possible wedding spot. I got out on the bike in the afternoon. Headed up to Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows. There is an awesome paved-trail network that runs along the West and North shores of the lake with extensions that go up to Squaw Valley. Ran into a bear in the parking lot of Alpine Meadows. Got a picture of it but not with my camera phone so I couldn't twitpic it. Saturday I got out for a long one an rode all the way down the west shore to Sugar Pine Point State Park in Homewood, where the 1960 Olympics nordic ski events were held. Crazy area of interlocking paved and dirt trails. Could have spent all day in there, but I had something else I wanted to see. On the way back up the west shore, I cut off to climb Barker Pass. From the trail map I had, it looked like a 3-4 mile climb, and wasn't very steep so I ripped up that at about 15-20mph. I didn't know the elevation at the "top" so I had no clue. Well, it wasn't just that 3-4 miles. That was just the rode leading to the REAL climb. Obviously the map was not drawn to scale, and about an hour of steady climbing later, 8 miles, and 1500 vertical feet, I reached the top. Most of the 1500 total vertical feet came in the last 4 or 5 miles, since the first half was nothing much at all. Kristine's brother Craig, his wife Kirsten, and there new baby Joss came up for a couple of days. We went to the local pizza place over looking the lake to watch the UCLA and USA soccer games. For my final Tahoe ride, I hit the road for a bit and made it over to Northstar going over Brockway Summit. From there I rode up the dirt service road to the MTB park area and then took another service road further up the mountain. Good climbing but coming back down on the cross bike was a bit sketchy. After dropping back to the main lodge area, I back-tracked on the road to Brockway Summit, where I attempted to pick up the Tahoe Rim Trail. A bit rocky for the cx bike so I jumped on the paved road that goes over past Watson Lake and on to Tahoe City. Time was running out so I dropped down to Watson Lake and then bombed down a jeep trail back to the lake. How I didn't flat 10 times going down that is beyond me! My parents also came up for a couple days. We went out on the boat for a marathon 6 hours on Monday. Serious sun and wind burn.