The Kalifornia Marriage Trip...

Last weekend, we went to Lake Tahoe for Pam's son Bobby's wedding to Jackie. We haven't driven to northern Kalifornia for years. We started off very early on Friday morning. Pam slept during the first part of the trip. As we entered into Nevada, the temps kept dropping. The lowest temperature I noticed on the car's thermometer was 10 deg. Then, during the next 8 hours or so that it took to get there, the weather went from nice, but cold, to blizzard conditions - about 10 times...

It was really weird. The sky would be clear and off in the distance you could see very dark clouds. When you hit them, it would start snowing and continue to get worse until you could barley drive, having to drop speeds down to 30 mph or so, then after a few minutes of that, it would clear up to an open sky again. This happened over and over.

The last, and worse, mini-blizzard was when we were going through Reno, at about 1pm in the afternoon, just before going up the very high mountain pass and into California. It was so bad, and the traffic was so messed up, that I seriously considered getting off of the freeway and finding a rental car place and swapping the Lincoln LS for a 4 wheel drive 'mountain car'. It was just crazy and I figured that it would only get worse as we went higher up the mountains.

We didn't have any chains in the car. I had carried them in both cars for all of the time we have lived here in DaHo, until last year. I had bought new chains for all drive wheels, one set for the Lincoln and two sets for the Jeep from Costco when we arrived in DaHo. I finally had to use them on Pam's Lincoln last year during a really nasty storm, so she could get down the driveway and to work at Dell, about 2 miles away. On the way home, while on the bridge, one of the chains broke and she had to stop and fix it. She wasn't real happy about that, and either was I as those were suppose to be good chains and having a major problem with them after 3 miles on snow at slow speeds is just not right. So, I ended up taking all the chains back to Costco, but, now back to the story...

We decided to go on from Reno, as there were no road closure reports on the radio, at least to Boomtown, which is the first big casino close to the Cal/Nev line, about 20 miles after Reno. When we got there the weather had cleared up a lot. Speaking about Boomtown, wow, it has boomed. They now have a new Cabelas store there, which is a BIG deal in such a little location. I asked some of the gas station attendants about the weather and they had no comment - a standard policy there I guess. So we continued up the mountain.

The weather cleared up as we went higher, which is usually not the case in such circumstances. We drove all the way to Lake Tahoe with little problem, except for one other little mini-blizzard along the way. After finding the hotel, which was a real challenge, I rested while Pam checked on the family that was there. After an hour or so, we went and had dinner with her daughter Jaz, husband Brad, and the Shadow, who had cut his thumb badly and had it all bandaged up. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Harveys and gambled a little, but left early to recover from the long trip.

By the middle of the morning the wedding party were arriving for the 4pm wedding. We were getting ready and meeting and greeting the other wedding guests, many of which we didn't know before, while we all waited for Bobby and Jackie to arrive. Which finally happened about 3:45pm...

While they were getting dressed for the wedding, Pam and Jaz kept their little son Joshua busy. He sure is a little cutie...





After everybody finally got ready to go, we were late and had to meet the Pastor in a parking lot. The original idea was to have the wedding outside, but it was too cold and the pastor got us into a local wedding chapel for the blessed event.

We finally got our turn to go in and when it all started, and the I-Dos were being said, Bobby passed out cold. I guess it was the high altitude or something...

He finally got revived in the cold outside, and the ceremony was completed. While we were just wrapping it all up, the next group were all standing outside in the cold and quite upset about having to wait for us.

Anyway, it all went great. After that, we all went to the Harrah's Buffet for a wedding dinner. It was up on top of the casino/hotel and had quite a view. The food was some of the best buffet food I have ever had. It was a great dinner and after wedding festivities. I was not feeling too good as my lower back was killing me. I guess the shot I got before Oliver was here in August had finally worn off, along with the 10 hour white knuckle drive through all the mini-blizzards.

Here is a picture of the newlyweds opening up our wedding present...

Bobby still has his shirt off from the recovery of fainting at the ceremony.

Because of my back, we left a little early and went back to the hotel. After a good nights rest, we left early in the morning for the relatively uneventful, but long, trip home.

One thing that really impressed me about the stay there at Lake Tahoe was all the political ads on TV. About 90 percent of all the ads on TV were either Obama or McCaine - over and over and over. Here in DaHo, we hardly ever see any national political ads. Everybody already knows how DaHo votes and don't bother to spend any money to try and change us...

I guess the storm that we drove through going to the wedding on Friday, really did some 'damage' here in DaHo. Our friend, Storm, called and said he had gotten 16" of snow on Friday at his place which is about 30 miles from our house. At the house, I hear we got about 3", but it was all gone when we got back.

The business is still going crazy. While we were gone on our 3 day weekend to Tahoe, we had orders for 80 more needles from our dealers.We are ordering a lot more 'parts' to build up our inventory so we can support adding on more dealers. There is always a lot to do which consumes all available time and more.

On this Tuesday, I did get another back shot to stop the pain and so far its doing OK. I guess we will see how it all goes as time progresses. I have now had 5 shots and only the August one really found the right spot and resolved all symptoms.

I did play pool in my new league. Another sorta OK night. I ended up sinking the 8-ball on my second shot in one game and got a 1 for the game which brought my nightly total down to 29 after another loss that wasn't my fault. I almost ran another table, but didn't. So, I still have three table runs in 4 weeks of play, which is the highest in the league so far. We had to play in a little bar our of town and it was so hot and muggy that I really couldn't breath at all.

We wish Bobby and Jackie all the best in their new life together. Well, that is about all I can think of that has happened here in DaHo...