Birthday

That was quite a birthday! My cousin, Zach, and his girlfriend, Katie, came up for the festivities on Thursday. On Friday, we tried for the river, but in the morning the raft company had not opened, so we decided to go on the boat around the lake. Katie had never been on the lake, although her friend had been to Tahoe may times. We went over to Thunderbird Lodge, the stately manor founded by the heir to PG&E and Richmond/Sunset real estate, former circus performer, and 1905 earthquake hero. The old woodie Thunderbird II was nowhere in sight.

We continued down the Nevada side of the lake and stopped at a cove and a group of rocks. Three of us jumped, and as usual, were stripped of our breath by the bone-chilling temperature. Two of us adjusted fairly quickly. We swam to the rocks and climbed up on them. The rocks were as warm as the water was cold; unfortunately, somebody had tagged the back of the rock.

Once we were back on the boat, we went southward, past the clothing-free beach. Since we had enough gas, we headed across the lake to Emerald Bay. The heavy snowfall of this winter, still abundantly evident in the peaks of the Tahoe Rim, had filled Emerald Bay nearly to its greatest extent, so that the water was a marine blue rather than emerald green. The waterfall behind Vikingsholm, usually a trickle at this time of year, was visible from the mouth of the bay as a foaming white spray. As we travelled around Fannette Island, I told the others about Mrs. Knight, who owned Vikingsholm, and her predecessor Cap'n Dick, who used to row to Tahoe City for drinks and rowed back drunk every night. Nobody wanted to swim to the island with me! The one unfortunate effect of the high water was this: the travel lanes in and out of Emerald Bay were not as idiot-proof as usual (and a lot of idiots go on vacation). The return trip was uneventful, except for gas.

Since we had missed lunch altogether, Zach, Katie, and I went into town and got a slice of pizza to tide us over. Later, Mom, Dad, Zach, Katie, Aidan, Kirsten, and I went to the recently reopened Hacienda del Lago. It was nice to have the place back, although the bar that they built for the (former) tapas bar places takes up a lot of room that used to be seating.

After dinner, Zach, Katie, and I went to The Blue Agave to kill some time before the movie, and ran into Aidan and Kirsten. Zach, Katie, and I then watched Captain America, which all of us (even Katie) enjoyed. Marvel is doing a good job of tranferring its interwoven narrative to the screen.

On Saturday, Aidan, Kirsten, Zach, Katie, and I floated down the Truckee (since the rafting had opened the afternoon of the previous day). The extra water that had been added that morning made navigation more hazardous, since the rocks which usually showed were underwater and all the gunk which heretofore had lain on dry, or least slight damp, land, had risen up and headed downstream in the current. Several groups of enormous size hit the river, so we had to avoid the logjams. I got suburnt, but it was a great last part to my birthday "weekend".

New Blog

Tomorrow is my birthday, so it seems an auspicious time to launch my new blog, The Tahoe Tongue, on the pre-settlement Washo language of the Tahoe basin. I plan to update it weekly while I work through Jacobsen's primer and beyond. I'd appreciate feedback on the clarity of the linguistic descriptions, since I want to make it as accessible as possible.

Birthday Trip

It's been five days and I have the pictures, so I suppose I should write about my birthday trip.

This year the whole family, minus the younger brother, headed down the hill into the desert towards Pyramid Lake. There was some trouble along Mount Rose, so we went down via Truckee instead, past the old power plant. Once we headed north from Reno, we began to enter the real Nevada and it was easy to see why the region had been settled by family bands rather than larger units. The destruction of the pinyon trees and the consequent desertification of the landscape did no good, either.

We reached Pyramid Lake and I was astonished at the shade of blue. I was assured that it was a frequent color for desert lakes. The eponymous Pyramid, an island-rock, lay next to Anaho Island on which the pelicans (I was initially surprised that Washo had a word for them) lived with many other breeding colonies. I had to indulge my inner anthropologist and take notes on the information sign. The simplistic and inaccurate orthography of the sign, pandering the linguistically illiterate, somewhat annoyed me, but the sign did provide substantial detail for the size of its font. Each Paiute band (since Pyramid Lake was Paiute rather than Washo territory) was centered around a water source and named after a characteristic food. In the case of Pyramid Lake, that food was the cui-ui, an archaic-looking indigenous fish, which was stranded there as the enormous glacial lake evaporated. Puff, who had been somewhat listless from the heat, found the environment of Pyramid Lake congenial, and wanted to explore the doubtless rattlesnake-infested bushes. There were groups of people day-tripping by the lake (which requires a permit from Nixon) and the the road north abruptly degenrated into bone-jarring rocks. I do mean rocks, not gravel. So we turned around.

We went through the surprisingly charming town of Nixon (headquarters of the Pyramid Lake Reservation) and headed east towards Fallon. The towns were conspicuously greener than the surrounding desert, but the area near the road showed evidence of water. It was not deep desert. Before we reached Fallon, we headed back towards the Lahontan Reservoir. It was larger than I had realized, but the outskirts of the adjacent town had a shabbiness typical of Nevada towns. On the way to Carson City - which is the capital of Nevada, not Reno or Las Vegas- we passed the Kit Kat Ranch and the Bunny Ranch, since Nevada is a land where many bad habits can be indulged without fear of prosecution. Dad expressed an urge to take the now-completed railroad line from Carson City to Virginia City. That would be fun, but it will have to wait until next year. Carson City itself is quite charming, and illustrated the virtue of having separate commercial and capital metropoleis. It would be worth a day visit. We returned to the mountains, and celebrated at home in the evening.

The shade of blue in this photo is slightly darker than

in real life.

You can see the Pyramid to the left of Anaho Island

Not a desert dog, but happy nonetheless

Birthday Float

This year, my birthday fell on a Wednesday. For most people, this would be an inauspicious time, but I had submitted payroll the day before, and had taken care of the imminent bills, so it seemed a good time to enjoy myself. The weather was less than optimal, despite previously glorious days, so I suspect my dear cousin Zachary or his lovely girlfriend brought the chilly weather with them. My original plan was a boat trip on the lake, since Katie had never visited Lake Tahoe, but that plan hit several logistical logs, so I chose to float down the Truckee River instead. I led my party to the wrong side of the river, where once long ago there was a launching point, so we had to return to the northern bank. The river seemed crowded, although it must be even more so on holidays such as the 4th. The boats on the river contained the expected mix of families and drunken yahoos. I had forgotten how far downstream the River Ranch was, if your craft is drifting glacially. The river was higher than I had anticipated, so many of the shallow parts, which in past years had provided me with formidable obstacles, were drowned. The point of such a trip is relaxation, so relatively little occurred that is worth noting. As we were emerging from the downstream side of one of the wooden bridges that spans the Truckee, two juvenile delinquents dumped a bucket of slightly rancid water on our items stored in the stern of the boat, as well as Zachary. Zachary grabbed the nearest projectiles at hand and hurled them at the brats; he hit both of them, but no adults were nearby, so it's doubtful they learned a lesson.

After we had finished our float, we went to the Blue Agave for a late lunch and a margarita pitcher.