We're Baaaaaack

We made it back in just under four hours, a record for my family. Back to the land of high speed Internets, dogs, a pool full of algae, and no food in the house. We got pizza. Yay.

Some vacation notes I forgot to mention before:

Danny and I were waiting for the family in the car outside Gar Woods, the restaurant that serves LOTS of drinks. Their drinking bus, that takes drunk people back to their rented condos, the one that says, "Gone Drinkin" on the front, was making a parking maneuver and hit a car right in front of us. Almost like the driver was drunk (but I'm sure he (probably) wasn't). The driver of the car who arrived later was very unhappy, even though the manager was apologetical... The word settlement comes to mind.

On the way up there was heavy traffic all of a sudden on the uphill trek. The fellow behind me stopped just fine, the moron behind him didn't and smacked right into him. I got to see crumpling hood in the rear view mirror, and hear that unmistakable THUD. Good thing the fellow behind didn't hit me. I'm sure the event ruined two vacations. Note to self: never tailgate and keep your eyes open.

The road signs for the trucks on Hiway 80 on the way down the hill from Donner Pass are pretty funny. They say eruidite things like "Let'r drift", "Easy going till Auburn", "Crank er' Up". We should have taken pictures.

The service in Tahoe restaurants could best be described as "variable". Some of it was good. Our dinner last night was notably the worst of all. We were seated. Our waiter visited our table a full 12 minutes later. Following our drink order we were served our drinks a full 20 minutes later. So we were in the bar/restaurant 35 minutes before we were served anything. Dinner came soon afterward and was pretty good, but the wait staff at first seemed genuinely unhappy that we were interrupting their work day. I left an 8% tip, only because the waiter himself had been told by the hostess (as I watched) to see to us, then failed to do so for another ten minutes.

The restaurants I like the most are the ones that don't take reservations, have an hour wait, and require you to come in and commit (to their "service") in person. I understand completely their motivation, they keep the seat queue as full as possible that way. Only problem is that it serves the business, not the customer. Too bad you can't switch restaurants more easily.

The weather in Tahoe during our visit was really very good. The water was consistently 68 degrees (the first six feet anyway) and all the drinkies we had were pretty good.

Realtors are very at ease telling you about the benefits of a 1000 square foot house that they are selling for $1,250,000.00. It seems thay have been to some desensitizing class to be able to do this. I think they offer the same class to people wo sell high end software packages; $250K for a compact disc.

I'll try to pull together a good set of pictures to post. I know, if I was a really good blogger I would have done this already, but hey, I was on vacation for crying out loud.

You should go to Tahoe. It is very nice, even though I complain.