A Picture of Olympic Valley

On July 2, 2022, I wrote that the day before I was writing at a Truckee restaurant called The Alibi before I walked back to my room at the Red Light Inn. I did what I needed to get ready for bed. I played the guitar downstairs and looked at the kitchen where some guy was making venison. The host asked why I wasn’t at the street fair.

I walked over to the bar named RMU and ordered. I had been there before. It was set up inside of a single family home on the main street. I went outside to the patio. There were a lot of college kids and I noticed that there was were overflow from the street fair which took up all of two blocks.  I saw small group of couples and dancing with a DJ.  The patio had a bar. Some lady said the bar was haunted. Later I walked to Bar of America down the street for fries.

I went back to the Red Light Inn and fell asleep by 11:30. Sadly, there was no cargo train that night. 

In the morning of July 1, I woke early and packed up. Immediately someone was cleaning my room.

I had a backpack and the panniers had everything else. I went to the coffee shop on Brockman and got a bagel and a latte.  The café was really dusty because the foundation was just a pile of shale. I disturbed a centipede in the cracks in the walls. I had been trying to look at the mandolin when that happened but decided not to put it away because of it so as to not disturb it any more than I had to.

I walked to Bike Truckee and they gave me a two year old KHS XL with a rack and I packed it up and adjusted my panniers. I got coffee next-door and the staff helped me get set up. I had zip ties, a hex wrench and a 29 inch tube. I got coffee next-door before saying thank you to the shop staff. I then took a deep breath at 7-Eleven and headed up Palisades to Silverfir.

On the way to Sawtooth Road (aka Road six), I noticed was having some trouble with the granny gear but thought it would be ok. Unfortunately, the Sawtooth Trailhead had no water which was a bummer. I took pictures and rode on. I had to stop a few times to adjust. Sawtooth Road is really bumpy and the incline varies.

By the time I hit Minton creek I was doing OK. I passed a bunch of kids and even some road bikes while I was riding Road six. However, the incline heading past Chief was hard. I dechained twice. That was when the derailleur slipped and stopped working well.

I managed to get a few miles experimenting with the gears and standing up. Cars passed both ways. I passed Chief Climbing Parking and Minton Creek Trail.  A bit later I started the big climb to Deer Creek – six switchbacks and I only had four or five gears. I stopped four times. Once to get a picture of Olympic Valley and the other three because the hill was so big. I entered Northstar around then.

I eventually got to pavement at Mount Watson Boulevard and took a rest at Watson Lake. I met a lady who was on vacation from her job at Sugarbowl. Some guy offered me water. I called Olympic Bikes about my derailleur problems and tried to interpret the map.

I rode up to Tahoe rim Trail and over the crest but not to the top of the mountain. On the mountain trail I had just made it to the Lakeviews Trail and was passed by a few people going the opposite direction headed to Watson lake.

I called my hotel in Tahoe City and then descended towards Dollar Estates. Four mountain bike bicyclists passed me. They used really funny language. I heard them mention that some trails that are “flowey” while others are “rock gardens.”  It seemed like three people and a guide but they all seemed like friends. They actually offered for me to come with them when they headed out to the forest road below Mount Watson but I was headed into Burton Creek Park.

This segment was hard. Burton Creek had some signs and I even managed to tweet everything but the cell service was bad. I had a hard time finding the creek which I knew would take me to my hotel -- Basecamp.  I made it into Tahoe City there right at sunset.

I checked in and after I got situated in my room, I went to the lobby and had a beer with the clerk who had a dog. After that I went to the Kat Grill but they were closed so I went to Pioneer and had pizza. 

In the morning of July 2nd, the day that I wrote this, I woke knowing I had to go to Olympic Bikes with my broken bike. I had a coffee at the lobby and went looking for the mechanic I had spoken to the day before. Sadly, they said my derailleur hanger was cracked. So, I spoke to the bike shop in Truckee on the phone and decided to just take the Truckee Area Regional Transit (TART) back to Truckee. The schedule said I had 40 minutes.

In the meantime the wheel had come off the bike. So, I zip tied the bike everything together and waited for the bus to Kings Beach (it was late but that was good). The bike did OK on the rack and I had been really worried about that. I transferred to the bus through Northstar.

The bus driver was overly focused on driving and was frustrated at being late.  In fact, every road next to Lake Tahoe was crammed with cars, even the road to Northstar. I found it interesting that the driver was complaining about the traffic since it was a holiday weekend and that was to be expected.

When he dropped me off, I dragged the broken bike to the bike shop and after a quick look they told me the bike was completely destroyed.  The cracked hanger had caused enough stress to crack the axle. I made conciliatory comments and then left them to do their work and grab a coffee next door.

Later the shop told me that they’d give me a new bike, which was fantastic.  I didn’t even to finish my coffee because I took off at that point on my way through the center of town and over to Safeway where I picked up enough food for a few days – ramen, a small jar of red peppers and two snack bags of olives.

Then I jumped on a TART with poorly organized bags and the bike. At Olympic Valley I went to 7-Eleven to get snacks and whiskey. Then I headed out to Pole Creek Trailhead. The highway was a bit unnerving because there were so many cars but I was relieved when I got to the trailhead.

While riding I posted tweets of the view. Then I had to make several stops as I approached 7000 feet. As I rode the switchbacks, I texted family and friends because I couldn’t tweet photos anymore.

The rest of the ride was mostly just texting photos to people. I took a break every 10 minutes.  It took three hours to do what should have been a one hour climb – gravel, incline and altitude.

When I finally made it to Bradley Hut it was six.  Sadly, the code from the main office at the Claire Tappan Lodge on Donner Summit didn’t work. The guy I spoke to responded to my call and provided some instructions but sadly the cell service was bad. I did get some messages from family and friends though.

I made my Ramen and had whiskey Gatorade. A blue car and a motorcycle both passed me as the sun was beginning to set. I set up a sleeping bag and decided to camp even while still trying to communicate with the lodge. When they responded they apologized but I noted that I was not certain if I would be getting my money back. That was around 1030 at night.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.