A Mystery Writer's Notes From Tahoe:
Where the water is pure, the air is cool, and the bad guys all get caught...
Even if people in Tahoe feel no need to lock their doors regarding people, they still need to lock them for bears. Bears are good at working door knobs. If fact, in some places there are building codes that prohibit swing handle doorknobs because they are too easy for bears to open up.
The extreme version of easy doorknobs is the door you just push to open. The 7-Eleven store in Olympic Valley found out the down side of such doors.
People seem to love being able to get out and go somewhere.
Here's a possibility. Come to the Harvest Festival.
I'm exhibiting my books along with hundreds of other artists and craftspeople exhibiting their amazing work. The last day of the San Mateo Harvest Festival is today, Sunday, November 14th. It is held at the San Mateo Event Center on Saratoga.
The Sacramento Harvest Festival begins this coming Friday, November 19th. It will be held at Cal Expo (at the California State Fairgrounds.)
Come on by. You will think it's worth the trip for both the exploration and the unique Christmas gifts that you can't get anywhere else.
The Tahoe Tribune did a story on South Tahoe local Martin Hollay who received yet more honors at Palisades Tahoe Resort. See the story at the Tahoe Daily Tribune, link below.
https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/south-tahoe-ski-legend-hollay-honored-at-ceremony/
At 101, Martin is still skiing, still smiling, still charming everyone he meets.
My wife and I first met Martin in 1990 at Heavenly Resort. He invited us to spend a day skiing with him. It was a blast. He gave us an "insider's" tour of the mountain, skirting around the boundary fences, heading down wonderful tree skiing where the public is not allowed to go. Several times, ski patrolers saw us. They just waved us through because we were with the #1 VIP on the mountain!
When we stopped for lunch, we met some of his friends from Hungary, where Martin was from. What a charming group! Martin pulled out his metal lunch box that he'd had from the time he was a boy, and he served us Hungarian food, crackers, cheese, sausage, and other treats.
We learned that Martin and his friends had left Hungary around the time of the Soviet invasion in 1956. The Hungarians had begun to resist Soviet rule, and the Soviets wanted to crush the uprising. Martin came to the United States and ended up in Tahoe, where he ran the Heavenly Ski Patrol for 25 years.
Martin also told us stories about competing in the Olympics. He knew everybody significant, including, of course, his younger friend Stein Eriksen.
Not long ago, I had the honor of doing a book signing with Martin at the Lake Tahoe Museum in South Lake Tahoe. I had my most recent book and Martin had his: I Was So Lucky: The Life Of Martin Hollay.
We had a great afternoon together, and he told me amazing stories. One I'll never forget was when I asked him about his current skiing.
He said, "Oh, yes. You know the Top of the Tram at Heavenly and the Roundabout Run that goes down from there?"
"Of course," I said.
"I still ski Roundabout every morning."
"Wow, that's great," I said, impressed that a man in his mid-nineties was still skiing down 1,700 vertical feet every day. I added, "I've always loved the views of the lake as you ski down."
He looked a little taken aback. "Oh, no, I don't ski down. I ski UP. On my cross-country skis. Then I ride the tram down."
That was a revealing look into Martin's life. And it suggests one of the main reasons he is still so vital at 101 years of age.
My wife and I have done a fair amount of skiing in our lives. And some of that was on our back-country skis, climbing up a good distance and then skiing down. But I don't think we've ever climbed up more than a thousand vertical feet on our skis.
Martin does 1,700 feet every morning.
An amazing man.
Palisades (the new name for Squaw Valley) and Boreal are both open as of yesterday!
South of Tahoe, Mammoth is open!
It is rumored that Mt. Rose will open in a week. Heavenly, Northstar and Sugar Bowl will be a couple of weeks after that.
All of the other resorts will likely be soon after, earlier than normal, thanks to the "atmospheric river" a week ago that dumped up to 3 feet on the mountains.
Have fun!
P.S. NOTE!!! BE CERTAIN TO CHECK THE WEBSITES OF ANY AREA YOU WANT TO VISIT TO MAKE SURE THEY ARE OPEN AND TO GET YOUR RESERVATIONS!!
Weather forecasts are by nature tenuous propositions. But they are usually accurate in alerting us to weather Potential if not exactly what will happen.
So when the forecast says we may get 6 - 7 inches of rain from Sunday through Tuesday, it is best to pay attention.
The snow level is supposed to be high and only briefly lower to 5500 or 6000 feet. However, for anyone up at 9000 feet (let's say, the Mt Rose Summit highway pass between Reno and Tahoe), the snow totals could be several feet.
Rain and snow so intense that it washes away roads and floods the fragile mountain slopes that recently burned is not the preferred way to break the drought, and it remains to be seen just how much precipitation we'll actually get. But if the atmospheric river comes as they predict, we'll try to see the benefits of moisture regardless of the damage that comes with it!
I went to CVS for my 3rd (booster) shot on Friday. I'm eligible because I'm over 65. I'd read up on it. Turns out it is exactly the same material in exactly the same dosage as the 1st and 2nd shot. Apparently, it also does the same thing to your body, which is goosing your immune system. If any covid-type virus gets into your body, your immune response sends out an army of different warriors to kill it dead.
So what did it feel like?
Nothing. The nurse swabbed my arm with disinfectant. I was distracted by something in the other direction. Then the nurse pulled away.
I said, "Everything okay?"
She said, "Everything's fine. You're good to go."
"You already gave me the shot? I didn't feel anything."
A different woman behind the counter heard me and said, "That's what everybody says. They don't feel a thing."
The joy of clear blue Tahoe skies is never so pronounced as compared to life during a forest fire when the smoke is so thick it often blocks out the sun or turns it very red.
That red sun is beautiful in its own way. But you can imagine how pleased we were to get back to Tahoe Blue!
Always a good thing when the forecast calls for snow. Sure, the snow levels are high. But it's only the beginning of October! Yay. The snow is four days out, but I'm not complaining.
Is this the mother of all art and craft festivals? It seems bigger than the Mountain View Festival, which is one of the biggest events of its kind. Unfortunately, the Mountain View Festival was canceled due to pandemic concerns for the second year in a row.
The Candy Dance in Genoa (Nevada's oldest town) has several hundred exhibitors,
It's now Saturday evening, and I'm home after my first day of the show. I can say that there are a huge number of exhibitors and lots of visitors .
I'm planning what I need to bring tomorrow. Today I brought more books than I could imagine selling under the best of circumstances. Yet I sold out of several titles. Tomorrow, I'll load my hand truck up with another stack of boxes.
I met a ton of readers. The stories I heard were touching. One gentleman said that the pandemic was very hard for him. But he started my series when the pandemic hit. Over the course of the pandemic, he's read all 19 of my books. He says they helped him get through the worst of it. What more could a writer want?
The Candy Dance goes until 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Directions: From 395 in Carson Valley, turn west on Genoa Lane #206. (It's easiest if you're coming from the Carson City area to the north. If you're coming from the south - Minden, Gardnerville -, you'll have to drive past Genoa Lane for a bit, then turn around so you're heading south before you can turn west on Genoa Lane.)
Drive west on Genoa Lane about 3 miles and watch for a large parking field on the left. There is a parking fee. You'll get some exercise walking from the field up Genoa Lane to the Main Street crossing. Mormon State Park is on the right. I'm in the park, space MS3.
There are exhibitor booths all over the area, so expect to spend some time exploring. Put on your walking shoes, come to Genoa, and enjoy your day!
Last week, I wrote about squirrel smarts. So while we're on the subject...
Everyone knows cattle are pretty dumb, right? Ranchers raise them, slaughter them, and people eat them. We don't give much thought to their intelligence.
It turns out that calves can be potty trained with about the same quickness as potty training a puppy. (They didn't try it with adult cattle. But we all know that potty training is best done young!)
Read the story. It's very fun. You'll never drive by another calf without thinking about how smart they are.
I read about a study that revealed two remarkable squirrel facts.
1. Squirrels can remember hundreds of locations where they've stashed food.
2. When squirrels know that other squirrels are watching, they fake where they stash food, pretending to dig holes and put food inside and then, when not under observation, they sneak off and hide the food somewhere else.
Deception is a widely recognized mark of intelligence. Dog deception has been well documented. In controlled studies, dogs will deceive and manipulate people in order to get treats. Zoo keepers have lots of stories about how primates deceive humans, like the orangutan that hides something a human wants by tucking it in his cheek and then pretending to "help look" for the missing item.
Now you can add squirrels to the mix.
Yesterday, we watched a Douglas Squirrel exhibit some dramatic food behavior. (This in the Sierra foothills while we are still evacuated from Tahoe.)
The squirrel appeared to watch other squirrels and act one way if other squirrels were visible and another way if they weren't visible.
For example, this squirrel ran up the trunk of a 100-foot White fir. At the top, it cut off the cones (which grow near the very top of fir trees). The heavy, green cones came crashing down, slamming onto the ground with enough force to knock you out or kill you if your head was in the wrong place.
After many cones littered the ground, the squirrel came back down. He made a show of looking around the ground (I'm not kidding), and picked up a cone in his mouth (a real feat of strength considering the cone probably weighed a third or even half as much as the squirrel). He ran north into the forest, carrying the cone. In a minute, he came back with no cone.
He looked around again, picked up another cone, then ran off with that one, again to the north.
After several trips carrying cones to the north, he paused, looked around, then ran up the trunk of a nearby Ponderosa pine, also about 100 feet tall. Soon he came back down the Ponderosa pine carrying a White fir cone. It seemed like he was moving a bit slower than before. When he got to the ground, which was still littered with white fir cones he'd previously cut and dropped, he looked around (looking for other squirrels?) and ran off to the east. We saw him dig a small hole under a Black oak tree, bury the cone, then run back.
The squirrel repeated this process, running up the Pondersa pine, coming back down with a White fir cone, pausing, heading east, and burying the cone under an oak.
After a few trips, he went back to his previous behavior. He ran up the White fir, cut and dropped some cones, came down the fir, picked up a cone that he'd already dropped from high up, and ran into the forest to the north.
We tried to make sense of this strange behavior, picking up cones off the ground and running to the north, then carrying cones down from the tree canopy and burying them to the east. Add into the mix that he used a Ponderosa pine as his highway to the sky whenever he wanted to carry a white fir cone down instead of merely picking it up off the ground.
There might be many explanations. But the one that made the most sense to us was deception. His obvious moves of picking up cones off the ground were followed by carrying them north.
The sneakier moves of going up a Ponderosa pine, leaping across from the top of the pine to the top of the fir to get a cone, and leaping back, seemed very much like a routine designed to make his varied efforts less obvious to any less industrious squirrels who might want to simply steal his cache rather than going to all the work themselves.
Intelligence? Major league by my judgment.
One week ago, the Caldor Fire required the entire South Shore of Tahoe to evacuate. The order was issued for some areas on Saturday, our neighborhood on Sunday, and the rest of town on Monday and Tuesday.
The sheriff's deputies came through our neighborhood and made us leave in minutes. (They were kind and polite, but FIRM.)
We took our computers and the clothes we were wearing and almost nothing else. That's stressful, not even having an overnight bag. It's easy to be gone for almost any length of time when you can have several hours get ready. The Evacuation Warning system normally gives you a day.
On Sunday morning, our area was not under Evacuation Warning. Then the wind shifted, the falling ash went from white snow to black charcoal chunks, and we were suddenly under Evacuation Order. (We never got the warning stage.) Thus we ran.
Now we will worry for days? weeks? about whether our house is going to be there when we're allowed back in. According to the current map, our house is okay. The firefighters were amazing. In nearby Christmas Valley, the fire came over Echo Summit, swept down the mountain on the west side of the valley, blew across to the east side of the valley, and swirled everywhere through the forest. Yet the fire fighters stayed near the houses and appear to have spared most of them from the flames.
We are very glad for the efforts of both law enforcement and the firefighters who throughout the Caldor burn have saved houses even as the wildfire roars right up to them.
Here is a link for one of the most up-to-date maps of the fire burn area. You can zoom in on the map and see, for example, how Christmas Valley burned and yet many of the houses were spared even though the fire came on all sides.
Now we'll watch the fire report and evacuation map for when we'll be allowed back in.
As for mood brightener... We had some business to take care of in Sacramento, but the only way to get there was to head east out of the Tahoe Basin, go north to Reno, then west down Interstate 80.
One of the best things about Sacramento is the American River with 30 miles of parkway on each side. Walking paths, biking paths, acres of green grass. Another good thing is its beauty, as you can see below.
