This past weeked I went on a guy's weekend trip to Lake Tahoe to bike 80 miles all the way around the lake. I was invited to go by my friend Chris Rossi, as he planned this to help celebrate turning 40 this year. There were six of us in the group, most of which were the same guys I hiked Half Dome with at Yosemite three years ago: Chris Rossi, John Crawford, Tim Doll, Jeremy Jacobs, Jeremy Evans, and myself.
The general plan for the trip was that we would stay in a cabin in South Tahoe, drive up to North Tahoe the first day and bike roughly 40 miles back to the cabin the first day, and then bike roughly 40 miles back up to the truck on the second day. As it turned out though, since the cabin we ended up renting was in Tahoma, which was almost half way between South and North Tahoe on the west side of the lake, and since we parked the truck in Inclination Village at North Tahoe, we ended up biking 55 miles the first day, and around 21 miles on the second day. And while that 20 miles or so we biked the second day was very enjoyable and reasonable for a group of casual, novice bike riders such as ourselves, what we did on the first day was a bit more of a challenge, especially around Emerald Bay. I had never biked more than a couple of miles in a day, and it had been more than 8 years since I'd even ridden a bike (I borrowed a bike from my neighbor for this trip), so to say I was challenged by this trip is big understatement. I had never before gone so quickly from feeling complete exhaustion and despair while biking slowly and painfully up a long hill to feeling such immediate excitement, exhilaration, and freedom while riding down the other side of the same hill. I moved between some degree of those two extremes many times during the bike trip and it was quite unlike anything I've done before. And to add to it some beautiful vistas of the lake, and then add to it a great and fun group of guys to experience it with... it made for a pretty enjoyable weekend.
Here are some pictures of the trip if you would like to see more: https://picasaweb.google.com/trent.crow/BikingAroundTahoe?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCOG14-Ssy7PZRw&feat=directlink
Other notable highlights included (warning, some of these are inside jokes... this was a *guy's* weekend afterall): swimming at a rocky beach after our final ride on Saturday and jumping off a rock twenty feet high into the water... John and Tim's inspiration from watching the beginning of the London Summer Olympics and driving the truck to bring the other four of us some bananas and moral support during our second day ride... the very fact we were able to fit six guys, six bikes, and all of our gear in Chris' recently new 2012 Dodge Ram truck... seeing the switchbacks up ahead on the rode around Emerald Bay and wishing for a few moments I had never learned to ride a bike... Jeremy Evans' urgent need to "relieve" himself while we were stopped for construction during our ride up Friday night... Jeremy Evans using his medical knowledge and vocabulary to give Tim eating and exercising advice but make it sound like insults... eating really good food at some hole-in-the-wall restaurants around the lake... Chris having our first and only "fall" off of a bike... and some that make far more sense in my memories than they ever would in this post.
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