Tahoe Tumbleweeds

Snowy Mountains
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

I’m sore. And I’ve still got bruises on my butt.
Friday morning we crammed ourselves into our little jetta wagon and zoomed up to Lake Tahoe to join our friends The Tumbleweeds—an overgrown playgroup that coalesced around kids who are now eight or nine years old. I think the youngest sibling is actually five and the oldest, India, is seventeen. At 47 I was the very oldest person in general. And feeling it.

I joked that we saw Al Gore on the way up. Standing on a corner, waggling one of those signs people hold nowadays to advertise crap. Al’s sign said “I told you so”.
Meaning there wasn’t much snow. You could just tell, even if you’d never been up that way before.
But there was a little and the kids lost no time making use of it for sledding and such. Fun. And danger. Our condominiums were on a little slope, backed by thickets of willow and trees and a creek. Quite pretty. The boys were sliding down the steepest slopes right into the thickets!

On Saturday we convoyed over to a petite skiing resort with a long German name and a slope set aside just for sledding. By sledding I mean plastic saucers and plastic toboggans of various kinds. None of those old fashioned wooden jobbies with the metal runners—thank god. There would have been lots of red snow.
As it was, the scene was chaotic and dangerous, with joy riders caroming down the icy slope, almost completely out of control and unerringly pulled by some mysterious gravitational force towards the hapless folk in their way at the bottom of the run.
Some of these hapless folk were other riders who had just landed. Others were true morons who seemed to be unaware that other people really exist and have physical properties such as weight and momentum. A true learning experience for them.
For myself, I was surprised to learn just how many of these idiots could populate one tiny ski resort.

Of course, I wasn’t feeling too bright myself, as I overshot the end of the icy ‘snow’ into the muddy gravel beyond and ended up slamming my ass into a little ditch full of very cold water. I think this might have been my first run! And that hard (yet wet) landing gave me the first and worst of my bruises. Ouch.

Somehow the sledding got more and more fun as time went by. In part because the warm sun softened the icy ‘snow’. But also because we began doing formations.
My personal favorite was one inspired by skydivers. We would hook our feet over a fallen fence at the top of the slope and plop face down on our saucers, all in a line, feeling the gravity of our situation. Linking hands we’d take off and the folks on the end would whip around to join us into a star pattern. A very fast moving, bumping laughing spinning star. This was really really fun!

There was a place at the bottom where a small pool of slushy water had formed—I suppose from so many people ending up there. It just got deeper and deeper. It had all the gravity of a black hole. In the star formation, some of us would be zooming downhill feet first. I’ll leave you to wonder whether I ended up in the pool.
Each night a team of parents would provide dinner for all. We’d feed the 13 kids first and endure the chaos and noise from a relative distance. Then the kids would go downstairs to watch television (shudder) while the adults ate in peace and quiet. Bliss.
The food was good and absurdly plentiful. We’d all radically miscalculated and brought way too much. I was teased for bringing three pounds of butter to go the bread for our meal. We used two sticks. Of course Krista brought six loaves of bread! We used two.
Oh well.
Each family fended for itself for breakfasts and lunches. I was astonished to see how efficient they all were! It finally occurred to me that all of their kids go to school. They have to be spot on to get them out the door in time. It was impressive (but I was secretly glad we get to lounge around in our pajamas all morning, drinking tea and having discussions).

On Sunday we tried a different slope, higher up and free to all on public land. The snow was much much softer (and yet way bumpier too). As the day progressed it became faster and faster sledding. Some of the more intrepid climbed high up the slope out of sight and would come barreling down this crazy chute, grabbing air and slamming down with an ‘oof’ over and over.
I’m ashamed to say I retired somewhat early. I had the sense that my tail bone had been crushed and was leaking spinal fluid. Not far from the truth it turns out.
I was also extremely agitated by the presence of snowmobiles and the rat bastards who drive them.
Aside from the horrific noise and the stench from their lousy two stroke engines, they were endangering people left and right. I felt an unaccustomed and unsettling violence posses me and was not entirely sad when we left that place.
I would be happy to see snowmobiles banned for recreational use. I’ll just leave it at that.

Aside from the big fun on the slopes, we had a wonderful time sitting around the condos laughing and debating and philosophizing and playing the cheap guitar we brought home from Bali. Being part of a group like that is fairly new for us and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

To be honest though, I don’t think the high elevation agrees with Krista and I. Each night we’d wake up around 1am and be completely unable to sleep until 4am or so. Weird. And laying there breathing that thin, dry mountain air was something of a torment. Ugh.

It was a good trip though and I’m glad we did it. I find myself wishing out little house was big enough to host another gathering. Maybe we’ll rent a hall.
Cheers.
rob