I took two sick days off last Thursday and Friday and went up to Lake Tahoe where my brother and his friends were renting a house for a week's vacation. They were out skiing when I arrived, but they left a key for me, and they returned soon after.

There was a core group of people there, and other friends floated in and out for varying degrees of stayage. I missed some people altogether, met some new folk who I didn't meet last Sunday, and some people I met last Sunday left while I was there. It was quite a luxurious arrangement, and the company was at least interesting, and mostly quite good.

They shared and rotated meal-making duties, and that night someone made a killer lasagna. I'm partial to frozen lasagna, but this must have been one of the best fresh lasagnas I've tasted, perfectly spiced and herbed, with mouth-watering, melted cheese. Sit-down dinner at the dining room table. From my point of view, this was "how the other half lives".

There was a nice refractor telescope at the house. The first night, I trained the telescope on Jupiter and its four Galilean moons and the Pleiades. They're just points of light, not much to get excited about, but the first time seeing it, it is exciting. I remember the first time I saw the moons of Jupiter, lying out in a cold field in Oberlin, Ohio with a set of binoculars, and that was very exciting! They thought it was pretty cool, too.

On Friday, the morning was spent lounging around, running/walking, reading, watching TV, playing X Box, and snacking. When they half-heartedly went for the slopes in the afternoon (they were tired after four straight days of skiing), I decided to go for a drive around the lake, re-visiting a bike ride I did around the lake several years ago.

That ride was probably the most grueling physical thing I'd ever done, more so than the two S.F. Marathons I put my poor body through. 74 miles, counter-clockwise around the lake, starting in South Lake Tahoe, on a rented bike that was too big for me, with no preparation, no training. I was stupid, I didn't know better. I thought it was a lake, so circling it would be no problem just riding along the flat shoreline. Unfortunately, the shores of Lake Tahoe are largely privately owned, and the only way around on bike is on the main roads. Not flat.

The injury to the insult came at the very end. If South Lake Tahoe is at 6 o'clock, right around the 8 to 7 o'clock point, towards the end of the ride, came the killer hill that just went on and on. Whenever I thought I was nearing the top, there would be more climbing. Or I'd think I had reached the end of the climbing and start descending, only to hit more climbing. I was yelling and cursing my way up, at least when I thought no one was in earshot. I was simply not mentally prepared for that sort of exertion.

Apparently I was not physically prepared, either. I could barely get out of bed or walk the next Monday. My spine was tweaked painfully off center, and I spent the next week and a half going to my chiropractor. I was a mess.

Last year, I found a book of Lake Tahoe bike rides, and it indicated that Lake Tahoe was at 6200ft., and the highest point of the ride around Tahoe was at 7000ft. That means any climb around the lake could not have been more than 800ft! I couldn't believe that the climb that nearly killed me (not really, but it was really, really hard), was no more than a paltry 800ft.

And it was true, driving around the lake, I measured that climb to have been no more than 500ft. It was the totality of circumstances that made that climb so hard, and I wasn't haunted driving up it. I was actually amused by its lack of dauntingness.

That night, someone made a scrumptious chicken parmigiana with tenderized chicken and a fettucine alfredo with a sauce made of heavy whipping cream *drool*! I took the telescope outside again in the cold and hunted down the Horsehead Nebula and it was my first time seeing that (yes, I was pretty excited). I also got Jupiter again for my brother's fiance who had missed it the night before. Only three moons were in view this time, but it was sharp enough to distinctly see two bands on Jupiter. That, too, was exciting for all.

The next day, Saturday, was my return home, and my brother and his fiance decided to hitch a ride back to S.F. early with me, instead of staying until Sunday morning and driving back at 6 in the morning with the rest of the crew. They stayed over at my apartment and we went to Blowfish Sushi which is a block away from me. We stuffed ourselves silly on incredible food. The next morning they went for their morning run through the Mission into the Castro, and by mid-morning I had dropped them off at the airport to return to Philadelphia. Bottom line is that my brothers are pretty awesome.