The Rest of the Story...Three Days at Tahoe

When I last wrote (what? a two week hiatus? WTF is up with THAT Alice?), we had finished the Napa to Sonoma half-marathon and done our last wine tasting at the post-race festivities.

That day Betty and I said goodbye to Mik and Elsie, who had to head back to SoCal to go to work (nasty four letter word), and we packed up the car, our girls, all our wine, and headed to North Lake Tahoe and Momma's cabin.

It was THERE, that we got to rest. Wel...sorta.

Mountain stream that runs near Momma's cabin....LOTS of water this summer. LOTS!

Momma and Betty on one of our walks...that's a patch of snow behind them...in JULY!

Let's just say that Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful areas. We took walks through the mountains. We went to the beach at King's Beach. The water was friggin cold, but I was willing to swim in it because it's fresh water and you don't feel all salty and crusty when you get out.

Nice panoramic shot of the beach at North Tahoe. It's unbelievable to me that those mountains STILL have a fair amount of snow on them.

It wasn't all sitting around and walking. One morning Betty and I went to play Pickleball, which is sorta like playing Ping Pong (or Table Tennis for those of you are aficionados), but you're on a court.

Blurry action shots courtesy of DramaGirl

Why is it that Betty looks like an athlete and I look like I'm out for a cup of tea?

I had never even heard of Pickleball, but one of Momma's friends was an AVID player and he asked Betty (the athletic one) if she wanted to play a pickup game....and Betty took me along. I want to make it clear that I did NOT embarrass myself or Betty. Pickleball, it turns out, will be taking the country by storm. I thought it would be more of a drinking sport (like Over the Line....or Golf), but it turns out that you can actually work up a sweat playing Pickleball. In fact, the next day, we both had some achy muscles, having used muscles that are not normally used during running.

But mostly, we hung out and relaxed. We watched way too much Bravo one afternoon (and Betty and I drank some of the wine we had with us). It was wonderful.

Our last day...lunch with Millie and Betty at Tahoe City

DramaGirl and me at the Tahoe City Dam, where the lake becomes the Truckee River

The next morning, DramaGirl and I left for our next destination...Kansas City. We left from Reno on a 6:20am, at the butt-crack of dawn, flight. Betty drove like a bat-outta-hell to get us to the airport in time because I completely lost track of time and we didn't leave Momma's cabin until about 5:10...and it's about a 45 minute drive to Reno from her place...you do the map.

All I can say is thank goodness that Reno has a small airport.

Thanks so much to Betty for driving and for all the adventurs...and especially to Momma for letting us stay with her. It was WONDERFUL.

Next up: Kansas City - HOT, HOT, HOT and HUMID. (also...I won't wait two weeks to write about it...I promise...I really need to get caught up with this before school starts).

Things I Did and Did NOT do last Weekend

Yes, I know that you've all been waiting with bated (baited?) breath for the weekend heffer-tour-de-Tahoe report and WHERE THE HECK IS IT ALICE?

Lots of excuses, including (this is gonna require bullets):

• the Charger loss to the J E T S, Jets, Jets, Jets that was occurring as I arrived home on Sunday, in which NOBODY at my house seemed happy to see me (except for DramaGirl...props to her for meeting me on the driveway, although I expect she was just trying to get away from the herd of boys in the house)
  
• having to spends some time with said family on Monday,
• having to get syllabi ready for classes (next Monday),
• having to get materials ready for a presentation I'm doing on Thursday (oh yeah...that's today...tells you when I started writing this epic)
  
• Then on Tuesday night the power went out oh about 11 hours, thus limited Internet (and I have just too much to write about to do it all on the iPhone, which doesn't have photos on it anyway).
• It rained CATS and FREEKIN' DOGS here yesterday too. GAH! (I know, I know, it's only three days, get over it!)
  

So...The herd had a great time at Tahoe last weekend and there's no way on God's Green Earth that I can retell it all, so here's the trip in photos.

To start, here are some things that we did:

Elsie, Betty, Mik and I drank Limoncello to toast our trip

We got to the airport on time

We partied at a fine bar in Reno and the herd got to meet one of my high school BFs (not pictured)

We took photos in a photo booth

Friday, we went skiing (me in foreground, Mik and Betty behind me, Elise's foot is behind them). Mik took me down a double-black diamond run where I skied like a novice. And no JoLynn, I did not wear a helmet this time.

Double-diamond run led to beers in the lodge (which I needed for recovery)

After beers, we skied some more (lake Tahoe in the background...BEE-U-TI-FUL).

Back to the cabin. Drank much wine while waiting for the rest of the herd to arrive

Drank all the wine. Texted the herd to inform them of our situation.

Took silly pictures in all the rooms of the house (yes, this one is in the shower)

Took more silly pix (Mik on the washing machine)

Then went outside where it was cold

Momma (and the rest of the herd arrived)

We went skiing again on Saturday (Mik, Wilma and I)

We ate an awesome dinner of Mac and Cheese (fixed by Mona...our chef)

Then there were some things I did NOT do

I did not plunge a toilet (but Mik did...and later Clarence). Trust me. This is VERY important

I did not bail out a sink (I was skiing) when the water backed up.

Momma and Daisy are smiling...but that's NOT what they're thinking at this moment

I did not do dishes outside, but Elsie did

By now, some of you have guessed that the plumbing went out...It's a very long and tragic story, but lets just say that there was no running water for the rest of the weekend)

Daisy also did dishes outside

So, to make a long story short...some of us decided to go to Reno, where there were flushing toilets and showers. Others decided to be real women and tough it out for an extra night. You can probably guess which group I was in...

So, Mik, Elsie, Wilma and I went to Reno where (in addition to showering and flushing) we:

Ran the next morning through the Reno hills (it was cold, although NOT as cold as Vegas), but I inconveniently forgot that Reno mud is not wet dirt, like it is in SoCal. It's more like sticky clay which SERIOUSLY weighs down the shoes and has to be scraped off with a stick

And of course, we had mimosas afterward

Then Mik, Elsie and I flew back to San Diego (while the Chargers lost...in all honesty, I'm glad I didn't have to see it)

While we were in Reno, the Tahoe-Heffers (BTW...I am making this part up. After all I was in Reno) had fun while they:

Enjoyed an awesome and beautiful snowfall

Took pictures of ceramic cows in the snow

Obtained glasses of snow (I assume for beverages?)

Marked their territory?

Had a snowball fight - probably to let off some steam after a tragic Charger loss to the Jets. GRRRRRRR - By the looks of this one, Daisy lost.

Were, overall, the epitome of real women -Mona, Momma, Betty, Daisy, and Clarence

Were led out of the mountains by Mona and went to Reno

Stayed at the Grand Sierra Hotel and watched planes land

Drew a diagram of what really happened and where in Momma's cabin. I love that the dishes are outside. Someone will have to fill us in on the rest...

And flew home. From what I understand it was a bumpy ride and there were no working toilets on the plane either

So there you have it, almost like two heffer trips to Tahoe.

Thanks again to Momma for letting us use and break her cabin.

As for running this week? I've done none of that, but I'm off to 'mill it this morning. Then presenst some shiz to the faculty. Now that I'm back in school, I'll probably be back to my twice a week posting schedule.

I'm woefully behind in blog reading this week, but I'll catch up with you all soon!

I won't write about it, if you don't...

For the past several months, I have been trying to post a something after Tuesday night's track workout. This week, you'll notice, the Tuesday/Wednesday post is a little late. In truth, I haven't been able to figure out what to write, or even if I did know what to write about, I wasn't sure that I had it in me this week to write anything that would be funny or thoughtful or even slightly entertaining due to the elephant in the room–the topic that I won't write about, but has consumed the majority of my thinking this week, and this has made it difficult to write about anything else... But since the majority of my readership of 12 doesn't want to read about that topic anyway, I won't be writing about IT...and for those (if there are any of those) who don't know what I'm talking about and are saying "huh????", I apologize, except to say that we've had a tough time at school this week due to a colleague's really very bad choice and it's been difficult and horrible to see my closest friends be in pain due to that choice, which has made it difficult to write and that's why I haven't.

But that IS all I'll say about that.

So...what to write about...what to write about... Luckily, I've discovered that in the blogosphere, Thursday is known as "Love Thursday," which I'm sure has all sorts of connotations that we could have fun with, but since I was thinking that I needed something to make us happy, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from these past 6 months of training that I just LOOOOVVVVVE!

First Day of Training...Do you remember the rain-run (as opposed to the Train Run). Do you remember how difficult it was to run 3 miles that morning?

Not a running photo...but I think a bunch of us know why I took this picture on the long ride to the Reno Airport from Momma's cabin (just too late to get the real road-side action!)

More love from before the SuperRun!

This one just makes me smile cuz Walter and Betty are in it

The scene of the crime...and the blogging catalyst

On a last note... about a week ago, another runner/blogger that I've been reading, who lives in Ottawa and is running her 1st marathon this weekend, wrote about how she's been sort of cranky during her tapering week and I'm wondering if any of you have been feeling rather cranky this week...oh wait, maybe we can't attribute our crankiness to the taper...it must be something else.

WE'RE RUNNING ONLY AN HOUR AND A HALF THIS WEEKEND. I do just LOOOOVVVVEEE to say that...

Alice

Looks like we’re all in!

Just a quick comment on Tuesday night’s workout...what kind of fun was that?

I’m looking forward to the 10K tomorrow am... What time is checkin? These runner’s are NUTS!

It looks like’re all signing up for the RnR on Tuesday night including BBJ who informed us that:

Big Booty has both cheeks in for the RR marathon

Jimmy C aka BBJ

By the way, I think I’ve finally managed to upload Round 2

It may take awhile to load.

Heffer? What’s a heffer?

Really, a heifer is a cow that hasn’t calved...and while that may be true for some heffers, it’s not true for all of us. In fact, two of us have grand-calves!

The true story is that about 15 years ago, Betty, Wilma and I were playing a bar trivia game and needed a team name. We saw the word “livestock” on a wall sign (this was an old Carlos Murphy’s which had all those old-school wall signs). “Livestock” was too many letters, so we settled on “Heffer” (spelled wrong, we know, we know...). Somehow, the name stuck and we started calling ourselves, “The Heffers.”

Over the years, more women have become heffers...there’s a really scary initiation ceremony that involves utters (not really...that’s a joke).

Mostly we laugh...A LOT. We laugh at life, at each other, at the ridiculousness of working with teenagers (we’ve all, at some point, taught high school), and in public education. We are friends; we support each other; we have cow paraphernalia hanging in our offices and classrooms...and once a year we trek to Momma’s cabin at North Lake Tahoe for a weekend of Farkle, Uno, leg wrestling, more laughing, and the annual “Tour de Truckee.”

This year, five of us (and BBJ who is married to Wilma, and Mik who has known Betty since birth...or thereabouts) decided to run the Rock and Roll Marathon this June...so I began this blog in order to chronicle that journey...but I like blogging (it reminds me of writing notes in high school...see how I’ve never left), so you’ll probably find me writing about other things as well. And when I can figure out a way to get paid for it, maybe it will become my full time job! :-)