On my last trip to Tahoe, I learned two things

Posted by Charles Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:31:00 GMT

One, when you’re at that point during an epic ride, when you feel you’re really out there, absolutely taxing yourself, just over the hump of finding out you will complete this ride and return alive, when you feel you have met Mother Nature on a level playing field and given her a formidable challenge, a pretty girl will go by. She’ll be wearing little more than a sports bra, and carrying little more than a water bottle. She’ll be cheerful. And she will make you reconsider what you think about time, distance, and effort.

Second, when ride preparations are hastily done, the planning didn’t happen, and I have just scrambled my gear together on the road side and jumped in a shuttle van on the way to I’m Not Exactly Sure, there is one thing I want to hear more than anything else, and that thing is “You’re Charles, right?”

So it went on the way up to Tahoe Meadows in the Flume Trail Shuttle, and how Nigel and I got started on a great ride on the Tahoe Rim Trail. An hour after we weren’t sure where we would riding, a long time customer of mine, who happened to be in the back of the shuttle van, was able to not only give us some good verbal instructions, but he had a spare map. He pointed out a trail that not too many folks know about that dropped us back to lake level, not too far from our truck after four hours of high altitude, long vista, rock crawling bliss, and it made our day.