Spring Breaking

I went to college in San Francisco, so I never had a need, want, or desire to go "do" spring break. I mean really, when you go to school in the best place in the world why would you go to some uncivilized outpost like Cancun? Even Paula Prentiss wouldn't have been enough to get me to Fort Lauderdale (hey, brunette, beautiful, and brainy -- what more can I say?).

This year however I needed to get away from the daily grind of, well, maybe not a grind but a very dull recovery period. So when Betsey needed to head up to Lake Tahoe to map out a tour she would be doing three weeks hence, I decided to tag along and we decided to make it into an overnight trip. A chance to get away, to get out of the ordinary, and a test of how well my surgically repaired foot would react to unfamiliar terrain and a four hour drive.

So we loaded up the Civic and headed to the Sierras.

I really love the drive up to Tahoe. It's the history of California in reverse. Start out in modern Silicon Valley, travel east through farmland, a quick cross over at Sacramento with it's gleaming towers of corruption and power, then out to Placerville, the last of the Gold Rush towns, still with it's quaint Main Street, even if that street's storefronts are being filled with Subway sandwiches and Starbucks coffee. Then up to the gold fields. The higher you travel the older relics. Stagecoach stops become Pony Express stations which give way to explorer camps till there is only the tundra, the expanse of the Sierras, the majesty of the sky and the realization of how small we all are in comparison to nature.

Neither of us had been to Tahoe in a long time. Best we could figure was that it was about twenty years since we had taken the boys on a family snow trip. Tahoe though was a deep part of Betsey's history. While in college she had worked in one of the casinos as a restaurant hostess. Back then Tahoe rivaled Las Vegas. Vegas was The Strip, tawdry and broken down. Tahoe was hip. It was ski all day and party all night. Middle aged businessmen who drove Buicks and voted Republican went to Vegas. Tahoe was BMWs and environmental concern. The place was jumping, crowded with ski fit gamblers and casinos needed such a large workforce that being slightly underage to legally work in a gambling venue just meant they gave you a job in a bar or a restaurant. Betsey lived with dealers, croupiers, waitresses, pit bosses, slot machine repair men, the entire menu of gaming services personal.

Which was why we were really surprised to see how quiet the South Shore was when at last we swung off Highway 50 and into town. Traffic was minimal, no one was on the streets and when we crossed Stateline into the Nevada side Harvey's, the Hyatt, and the other casino hotels all looked ready to be boarded up. True, this was late in the ski season, but the ski runs were still open. The weather was beautiful, warm with just a touch of cool to remind you how high above sea level you truly were.
Where was everyone?

To make matters sadder, the BMWs were gone. Hell there weren't even Buicks. It was all pick up trucks and ratty looking minivans. The only sign of a spring break contingent was a solitary volleyball game on the lake beach. I know Tahoe isn't a huge spring break local for collegians, but in the past it always drew a good number of them.There seemed to be no life, no excitement in the air. It could just as easily been a cool day in Laughlin.

We drove around getting the timing for the tour and locations to stop at settled. Next we checked into the hotel we had booked, a Holiday Inn Express. We had booked it when we decided to make this an overnight, not even considering the big hotels because we assumed they would be booked up. I'm sure they would have loved to have us, cane, knee scooter, and all. As it was, the Holiday Inn Express folks were happy as all get out to assist us when Betsey asked for a room on the ground floor to accommodate her mobility challenged husband. I believe the phrase used was "pick which one you want".

The experiment with car travel had gone well. It was more comfortable to ride without the shoe on the bad foot, but I had no problem either with the travel or putting the shoe back on when stopped. I was able to walk around with only the cane for support and at times even walked without the cane. I was feeling pretty darn good about things.

For dinner we opted for the indigenous food of the region, the casino buffet. More accurately it was the $17.99 surf and turf special at the Lakeside Inn Casino. Walking into the casino we were greeted with the unmistakable aroma of the gaming room. Cigarette smoke, spilled liquor, and overuse of perfume combined with the air-conditioned accented scent of failure and greed. Oh yeah, now I remembered why I didn't like Nevada casinos. We made our way to the restaurant. Instead of fresh faced college kids looking to make some extra bucks, it was staffed with veteran hash slingers hoping to make this week's rent. But the surf and turf was quite good and a bargain to boot.

The next morning I had been thinking of going to the Red Hut Waffle House, a near legendary diner on the outskirts of South Shore that for years had been the hangout of the gaming industry workers. Finding out the Holiday Inn Express served a complimentary breakfast made it easier to chose to not be disappointed to find the Red Hut a ghost of it's former self. Coffee, yogurt, and losing out on the last banana and we were back in the car, headed home.

All in all a pretty successful trip. Betsey accomplished routing out all the possibilities for her tour and I found I could make a four hour car ride without needing hospitalization. A nice way to spend spring break.