The next couple of days were a mixture of chilling out and putting the bikes back together after they had been boxed up for the flight from NZ. The trusty Surly bikes (which have now done getting on for 2500km since we started), seemed to have survived the flight okay but taking them apart seems to mess up the gear and brake cabling so we took the assembled bikes down to the bike shop in Folsom for a professional check up and retune. The shop was brilliant and the bikes are currently riding better than ever - really smooth and trustworthy gear changes; makes such a difference.
With the bikes sorted we turned to our next experience - skiing in the Mountains by Lake Tahoe. Mike and Pete are very good skiers and Loeki is pretty good too, so we all headed off to the slopes on a Wednesday (or was it Tuesday...?). The Sierra resort is a one and a half hour drive from Folsom on the Interstate 80. Snow-falls across the US have been really heavy (except in most of CA and Florida) and the conditions were night on perfect - cool, sunny, quiet. Pete is a very good skier and has taken a range of advanced courses and was able to give us some simple but really useful tips to improve our skiing. A couple of changes to the way we do things has enabled us to take a step forward which was great. All the facilities were really good - Caroline was particularly chuffed with the gentleness and relative calm of the chair lifts. We returned back to Watson Towers tired but happy with no major ski incidents to report.
The next couple of days involved more chilling out and catching up. We did about 20km of cycling around the Folsom Lake and American River. The traffic free track is a dream to cycle and we agreed to do more after we had returned from further skiing adventures.
For the forthcoming weekend the Mike and Stacey had rented a big Cabin on the shores of Lake Tahoe and a short distance from the North Star resort that we were going to use. Terry and Erin arrived from Washington and Zach a friend of Vince's and Max joined us to complete the party. The only fly in the ointment was that Mike had been struck down with severe back pain and was unable to do any skiing! This was a real shame as the weekend had been planned for a while and we know he was really looking forward to it and we missed him on the slopes. But even though North Star was really busy the skiing was great and we managed 4 full days of constant skiing and with further help from Pete we continued to improve. Caroline did not fall once...Mark at least twice a day, mainly from standing still!
On one evening we lit the big log fire and all sat down to watch the Full Monty, and it was great to re-connect with a slice of England albeit a hyper real slice. It did not inspire any male stripping in our party, though. For another night we all went to a great restaurant called Spindleshanks. The views and environment around Lake Tahoe are really fine and we had a front row view of it all so we will be forever appreciative of Mike and Stacey's kindness in setting up the weekend. All of the party had to leave on the Sunday and so we got a night in the Cabin to ourselves; while we missed everyone else it was good to have the place to ourselves. We were intrigued to read about the arrangements for the trash when we were preparing to leave; they are subject to all sorts of security because we were advised that there were "bears in the area".
The drive back to Folsom was a bit nerve wracking as the snow started to fall heavily. We just escaped the worst of it which would have required us to put chains on the car wheels.....also we had sandwiches in the car and were a bit concerned about the bears! The route also took us through Donner Pass which in the old wild west days was the scene of a cannibal survival story involving the Donner family wagon train which got stuck in the snow in the pass...ho hum.
We spent another couple of lovely days chilling and chatting in Watson towers, taking it in turns to cook meals and going to watch Max and Vince play indoor soccer games.
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