Sun, Fun and Triangular Calimari

It's all said and done, I am back from Lake Tahoe, with another 100-mile bike ride under my belt. Together we raised $4,915.00, just shy of the $5,000 that I wanted to raise in honor of my Uncle Ed.

(For the Johnny-come-lately set, I am taking donations through the end of the month, both online and by check.)

This time around, the "century", as they call it (because that's how long it feels when you are going up some of those hills, I think), went down a bit easier. I knew where every turn and twist in the road would be, how steep a hill was, and where the road got rough. This information did not help me hit my goal of reaching 50 mph, however. There were too many slowpokes in the way.

And this year, I was not as caught up in the excitement of it all, and stopped to smell the roses, and take a picture here and there along the way. My ride time (that doesn't count times when we stopped) was about 6 hours and 30 minutes.

This year, I had even more trouble on the hills. That may have had something to do with the four-hour uphill trek I went on with my Northern NJ brethren to some waterfall nearby. The Bosmas called it "Horsetail" falls, but no signs called it that. I took so many pictures that day that the battery died when Jessie and I finally made it up to the falls. My ability to stray off course is not exclusive to road biking apparently. We crisscrossed around the trail, so it would seem that our path was something out of Family Circus.

So we were late for the Kick Off pasta dinner the night before the race. In fact, we basically missed the whole thing. We got there in time to hear the tail end of a speech from a woman fighting leukemia, who was forced to give up her pregnancy to battle the cancer. Her words galvanized this hodgepodge of people from around the country, reminding us why we were getting up at 5am the following day to spend a waking day on a bicycle.

But we still needed dinner. On our drive up and back the main drag in Tahoe I had spotted "Vep's Villa Roma, Italian Restaurant". With the promise of piles of pasta awash in a zesty red sauce, we pushed through the door. Disappointment was near immediate. The décor was as if aliens had been to every tourist trap across the planet and used that as a template to decorate the place, and then had not changed a thing in 40 years.

There were wicker wrapped wine bottles, trellis with fake vines and even faker grapes, and red checkered table cloth, for starters. We were told the wait would be 40 minutes, at least. Swallowing down frustration, we propped ourselves at the bar and got some diet Coke, which the bartender then proceeded to tip over and spill as he was handing them to me.

Dinner was a greater culinary farce. Having ordered fried calamari, one would expect at least one of two things: the tell-tale rings, and perhaps even the tentacles. But in our platter were these acute fried triangles, about half an inch thick. I asked what they were, and the waitress called them "steaks".

Now I have seen some large squid in my time, but steaks of squid? I could only assume that these were some weird variation on the chicken McNugget, and quickly lost my appetite. The salad bar was Spartan and the soup, well, let's just say that the name didn't really clue you in on what it actually was. At some point, my hamstring cramped up, as if my body were convulsing in protest.But I got my pasta, ate as much as a could.

Not being gluttons for punishment, we skipped dessert (being so far from the East Coast, I shuddered at what butchery would become of their NY-style cheese cake). And then we headed home so I could get to bed a bit early, as our team was gathering at 5:45am for its 6:20am start.