I had planned as my new years resolution to really ramp up my weblog, but a crazy work schedule has been in the way of that.

Anyway, for your reading pleasure, I wrote a bit about our recent trip to Tahoe, which I posted on another website spogg.com

I reproduce it here:

We went to the Lake Tahoe area from Feb 21-24. Lake Tahoe is a large lake on the border of California and Nevada. There are many ski resorts there. It is a very nice place, although a bit crowded and commercialized for my taste. We didn't leave the Bay Area until 3pm, so we got to Truckee around 8pm.

We ate dinner at a Mongolian BBQ place where I had taken my daughters before. Like most Mongolian BBQ places, it was a bit of a messy restaurant, but still tastes good. The cook at the bit steel oven thing was a Mexican guy who always gave a big smile as he delivered up your bowl of pan fried goodies.

The next morning, daughter #2 was developing some kind of rash. She had red spots on her legs and arms. I went to a nearby drug store and bought some camphor lotion, and also some calamine type lotion and put in on the rash. We suspected the rash was a reaction to the jello from the BBQ place, as daughter #2 was the only one who ate it.

We went to Soda Springs to do some "tubing" - this is where they have large tire tubes with canvas covers. You grab a tube and a man hooks you up to a cable pull which drags you up the mountain, and then you slide down one of the 2 or 3 lanes they have. The weather was overcast, so it was a bit cold. (Actually, it snowed lightly on the night of our arrival.) We had some fun, but daughter #2 gave up early, and went to sleep on mom's lap in the snack bar / lodge building.

On the 3rd day, the rash on daughter #2 was turning into full blown hives. I returned to the drug store and bought some hive relief medicine, but daughter #2 didn't want to go out, so mom and her stayed in the hotel all day. I took daughter #1 to Northstar, where we managed pick up half day tickets after noon. We took the gondola up to the midway point, and practiced a bit (this was the 2nd time for my daughter to go skiing.) Daughter #1 held my ski pole and I dragged her up the incline and then held her belt as she skiied back down 5 or 6 times. Then we went down the basic slope together. I held some ski poles horizontally and daughter #1 held on to the same poles for stability and skiied along side me. After a lunch at the bottom, we went back up again and I convinced daughter #1 to go on the chair lift. She had proclaimed that she would never ride on the chair lift, ever... but she bought my argument that skiing down the hill was way more dangerous than sitting on a chair lift. So we hopped on the chair lift, and got off with a perfect exit / ski down the ramp. All told we only managed about 4 runs in the half day, but this old man's legs get pretty tired trying to ski and support a 6 year old at my side at the same time, so that was ok. I should also mention that we bought some candy at the mid level lodge, and the cashier there was a young lady with a name tag that had her name and the words "Lima, Peru" below it. I thought of Claudia, and I asked the lady if she was really from Peru. She said yes, and that there were lots of Peruvians and Brazilians and Argentinians working at the Ski lodges through some sort of exchange program. I told her that I had chatted with someone from Peru on the internet.

We returned to the hotel and checked up on mom & daughter #2. They were ok, although a bit bored. They had walked to the nearby Chinese restaurant and picked up some wonton soup for lunch. They still didn't want to leave the hotel, so daughter #1 and I went out for Sushi. We had to wait 20 mins to be seated, and the deal was $24.95 per person for 2 hours all you can eat Sushi. As for the staff of the "Japanese restaurant", there was 1 guy who I figured for Korean or Chinese behind the long sushi bar, and everyone else was Caucasian or Latin American. Yes, I paid $24.95 for my 6 year old daughter, and same for myself. The sushi was not bad at all! One of the waitresses looked like she was Kevin Bacon's sister. I wanted to ask her in a humorous way if she knew she looked like Kevin Bacon, but I didn't. 6 degrees of separation, indeed! We bought some take-out for those 2 people stuck in the hotel, and returned. Daughter #2's hives seemed to be getting a tiny bit better, or less worse, as it were, but she also had a few new red spots on her face, which was worrisome.

On the day of our appointed return, although we had thought daughter #2's hives were getting better, she was beginning to get more spots on her face. Hives can be life threatening if the reaction impairs your ability to breath, so hives on the face was not a good thing.

We decided to stop by a doctor's office. We checked out of the hotel and went to an urgent care facility. The doctor had a giant Golden Retriever (dog - K9?) in his office, which was very gentle and friendly. The Doctor himself, looked ironically like the 3rd Doctor Who - played by John Pertwee. Doctor Who checked daughter #2 for strep throat (he said strep & hives would indicate something serious like rheumatic fever) but no strep was found. He said "yep, it looks like the hives", and wrote a prescription for some medicine, and charged us $150. He also warned us to be on the look out for any symptoms of a virus. He said he had a lot of patients with viral infections lately, and the hives could be a precursor symptom of something. Incidentally, he said that he had never seen a case of hives on the skin that also resulted in the feared "difficulty breathing" problem, and that in the case of respiratory problems, the hives would be affecting the throat and tongue rather than the skin. He didn't say anything about Daleks, but we thought it would be good to keep an eye out for those too.

We went to a nearby Rite Aid and ordered up the prescription. Fortunately it was covered by insurance, so we only had to layout $5. Then we went for ice cream, but the ice cream store was not open yet, so we went to take some pictures just outside of Truckee. Daughter #2 seemed to be feeling much better, and the Doctor had most importantly relieved some of our fears.

We took some pictures and came back and got ice cream, and asked daughter #2 if she was feeling well enough to go tubing. She said yes, so we went to Kingvale, which is not far from Soda Springs, and really its just a gas station on the side of the freeway with a tubing place nearby. We had a good time there and I was happy #2 managed to have a bit more snow fun.

Finally, we set off for home. Although its more direct to go from Truckee to Sacramento on highway 80, we headed toward the big Lake Tahoe, and circled around to the town of South Lake Tahoe, as that is a more scenic drive, and gave us a chance to admire the giant lake. We stopped for burgers in South Lake Tahoe, and then drove down the mountain.

Daughter #1 was getting carsick about the same time I noticed a disturbing vibration in my car. At first I had thought it was just the weird texture of the road (that happens sometimes) but it got so loud it was obviously not that. I pulled over to check my tire. I opened the door and smelled a burning rubber smell, but I thought maybe it was just the brakes from all the downhill driving. On closer inspection, I found I did have a flat tire. We were stopped just outside of Placerville near the bottom of the mountain.

I put mom and daughters on the side of the road, and proceeded to unpack the trunk so I could get the spare tire. I had to fumble with the car jack and figure out which point on the car I should position the jack under to lift it up, but eventually I figured it out. Once I was confident that the car was jackable and tire bolts could be loosened, I announced to the ladies that I'd have them out of there in 10 minutes, and I did.

The spare tire was one of those extra small temporary kinds, with a warning not to exceed 50 mph under any condition. Despite the warning, I still drove around an average of 60mph, and we passed across the California Central Valley, through the capital city of Sacramento, and made it as far as Dublin when I heard a worrisome vibration from the spare tire (again.)

I pulled off at the Stonestown Mall, and found the spare tire was almost flat. I wandered around until I found a gas station and put more air in the spare, but after getting back on the road, the funny sound persisted. I pulled over and checked the spare, and it had a nasty bulge on the side, so I pulled the car into a strip mall.

To make this long story short, we ended up calling for a "tow" truck (really a flatbed) - and a big barrel chested guy with a beard and an earring showed up. He didn't seem to want to haul us to San Jose, which made him quite helpful in suggestions on how to save money by not hiring him to take us there, but in the end we decided it would be best to get the car back to San Jose. I asked him to drop it at a Good Year place within walking distance of my workplace. I had also arranged for a good friend of mine to meet us there and take us home (only about 10 mins away.) The cost for the tow job was $280 AFTER the American Automobile Association discount.

It was a bit after midnight when we finally got home. The next day, my wife gave me a ride to the tire place, and I arranged for a full set of 4 new tires. I turned out the reason for the flat was poor tire alignment, which had caused both my front tires to wear down to the tread. The rear tires were due for replacement anyway. A set of new tires for my sports coup MX6 cost me about $700.

If you've been keeping track of the tragedy expenses, that's almost $1000 in unexpected costs! Overall, we still had fun, and I'm glad I got daughter #1 to go skiing again, AND to ride the chairlift. Along the way, I also manged to read about 3/4 of the novel "The Da Vinci Code".

We had our share of bad luck on this trip, but if nothing else, at least I can say it made for an interesting story!
4:35:52 PM      comment