Road Trip to South Lake Tahoe

We had a wonderful road trip to S. Lake Tahoe. Steve and I are truly compatible travel buddies! We drove the rental car, so were fairly comfortable. We took 2 days each way, coming and going, taking the back roads there and the freeway returning, and 3 days with Tyler and Sara.

I thought it was treacherous in the snow, even tho this picture doesn't quite look like it.

Ty and Sara have a really lovely life together.


I loved seeing him as a sweet and affectionate boyfriend (and neat in the kitchen!) and she is, well, there's no other way to say it, a great addition to all our lives. She's adorable, smart, and funny. They do crossword puzzles together!

We played in the snow with their new pup, Aspen (they live on Quaking Aspen Lane), and here's Steve "wrassling" with her, did the requisite parent things like getting a warm curtain for their bedroom window and putting a door sweep and insulation in the gaping hole of their front door.
Their apartment has had some "settling' issues (see upstairs porch in picture of Ty outside with Aspen). We walked over to the ski lift from his place, which is only a few hundred yards away from his door. His restaurant is even closer, about half way to the ski lift. He's doing well at the restaurant,and was promoted to sous chef, which means he's second in command to the head chef! Sara's learning a lot and writing some controversial stories in her new job as a journalist at the Tahoe Daily Tribune newspaper..




Ty made lots of scrumptious food for us, including a fab leg of lamb and a panna cotta. Oh, yum.. I'd left my camera in the car or there'd be a picture of it.




Steve and Tyler did some derelict-bonding, too.

On our return trip we had to put on chains at the Oregon border from California. This was my very first experience with chains, ever. (I've led too sheltered a life, I guess!) So I found it quite exciting, even tho it's quite mundane for all the trucks lining the roads who have to do it so often.


On the first day we started out Steve had to put on the chains and then they closed the freeway so we had to take them off and go back to Yreka, to a motel earlier than we'd planned. (Yreka Bakery is a palindrome),


Then the next day we had to put them on again, in the sunshine, with no snow on the road, and then they were barely necessary for a very long time until we could take them off again.

We arrived home quite late at night the next day, always glad to be home. We'd left on a Friday and returned late on the next Thursday, and still had no word about the insurance for my wrecked car. Now it's the day after Christmas, and maybe we'll get a call some day this week letting us know how much they're going to give us, so we can look for another used car. I'm having a bit of a problem understanding that my crappy looking car (because of the previous deer incident damage) , which was doing well internally, won't be worth as much to USAA as it was to me. Sob.

Back home, abroad no more, for now....

Now that we've been back for 2 weeks, I may have forgotten most of what I would have written, but I'll try to make a nice precis of the last week of our trip in Antalya and Prague.





Why the heck does there have to be an Abercrombie and Fitch in Antalya!?

And here's Sidney with a stray cat he sneaked into the hotel for a little "pick me up."







We sent our Iraqi friends off for a couple of days in Istanbul before they flew back to Baghdad. A bus picked them up to go to the airport in Antalya and there was much, much hugging (females only...) and tears and picture taking as our new buddies went away. I've already received an email from Hashim, the most charming of the young guys and I'm going to be sending a stash from my beanie baby collecting days to his kids and the kids of the others who work with him.

We flew to Prague via Istanbul and then Zurich and arrived back late at night Saturday, with only Sunday to play before heading back to the states on Monday. It was VERY cold, even snowing as we took the trams to Steve's office to pick up the cold weather items we'd left there for safekeeping. Here's Steve waiting for the #7 tram and me braving the cold on a couple of our forays out on Sunday. These older women (below), chatting on the tram, reminded me of my grandmother in her gorgeous Persian lamb black coat.















We then went for a Thai massage, a couples massage, as it turned out, so I could watch some little woman sit on Steve's cute butt and massage his back. He never opened his eyes to meet mine (isn't that what "couple's massage implies?) and my masseuse didn't sit on my butt, anyway. She might have thought I was too fragile...but it was a good massage. The best part was that she INSISTED on dressing me afterward, probably because she saw me have trouble getting up off the floor and thought I needed help. She put on my socks and underwear, hooked my bra, zipped my jeans and put on my coat and I hugged her for being so sweet, tho she only understood a few words of English. Oh, the best part: Her name tag read "Porn." A certificate showed her name as something like Samporn, so a logical nickname.




After a rest and a dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant, where they, surprisingly, had a picture of the World Trade Center in NYC


We then we had tickets to the ballet, Sleeping Beauty, which Steve had ordered when we were in Prague 2 weeks earlier. . We left with plenty of time to spare, GOOD THING! Because the tickets had the address of the ticket box office, not the theater where the performance was held. We walked and walked and by the time we figured out where we were going my legs had completely given out and he had to piggyback me for blocks and blocks and blocks. NOT VERY DIGNIFIED! We arrived at the most gorgeous theater JUST AS the performanhe began and the doors were shutting and I had to hike up the stairs in the dark and stumble to my seat. But it was all worth it, because the ballet was gorgeous and well done and the theater was spectacular.








Prague’s Estates Theater is the actual theater where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart chose to premiere Don Giovanni, on October 29, 1787, also conducted by Mozart himself!


We even met a woman from Pittsburgh during the intermission! Someone took our picture but you can see who the really beautiful people were...









Here's me, happy after an evening at the theater!





We got home in time to go to bed for our 5 a.m. cab to the airport he next morning. The pre-ordered cab didn't arrive, we had to call for another, but we got to the airport ok for our then grueling 26 hours from Prague to Frankfurt to Cincinnati to Salt Lake City to Bellingham, where it was snowing as Erin picked us up and I practically had to be carried down the slick outside ramp by a huge female airport worker.

Always happy to be back home, it took another week before my jet lag abated. Then I was hit by a stupid driver crossing two lanes of traffic, BAM! Without any warning she was in front of me. My car is probably totaled (93 Maxima) but I haven't had an appraiser out to look at it yet because of the bad flooding in Chehalis last week, they're too busy.





So I'm driving a horrid rental car, tho it does have the needed-hand controls, until we can get a $ amount they'll offer us to buy a new, used car. I'm sad at losing the car I've had for 5 years, even after the deer slaying incident,, and horrified at how quickly accidents can happen, but, of course, no one was hurt. NEVER CROSS TWO LANES OF TRAFFIC IF YOU CAN'T SEE BOTH OF THEM, even if someone waves you in.

Now we're on our way down to visit Tyler and girlfriend Sara in South Lake Tahoe for a few days, Steve wanted a road trip, I wanted to fear getting hit by an avalanche, so we're driving the rental car 2 days each way to spend 2.5 days with the kids!

Now that I've gotten the hang of blogging, I'll probably do this once in a while but I'll need a catchy new title.

Karen