A Cruise on Lake Tahoe.

And so the Lake Tahoe Relay race was run, if not won. We were all elated that we had completed it. We were 76th out of 97 teams. It was a great way to see the lake up close and personal, crawling around it in a support vehicle all day and even running alongside it for 10 fast, or at least difficult, miles. We went home and had pizza that night. (Below right: That's the hill I ran over. Photo credit Bex.)

The next morning B left to return to work. I drove A to the Reno airport. A few minutes after I dropped her off, she called to say she was standing in line with the recently crowned Miss Nevada, who was ostentatiously wearing her winner's sash. I told A to put on her Lake Tahoe Relay Medal and show Miss Nevada up. (Below left: K's last hill was 3 miles long.)

From Reno I drove into the hills to Virginia City, a rip-roaring silver-boom town in the late nineteenth century. It's perched on a hillside atop a mountain and at one time it had a population of 45,000. Now it is a sleepy tourist trap with wooden sidewalks on both sides of its mile-long main street. The town overlooks several open mining pits where silver barons took the ore out of fabulously wealthy silver lodes. (Below right: H points out her section.)

Coming back, I passed through Carson City, the state capital. I stopped in a casino for a $1.99 full breakfast, then returned to Lake Tahoe. I drove down K's route in the race, leg 2, and it just wound downward out of the hills forever. Remember, K was on foot and running up it. I also drove over my route of the previous day, leg 1, and tried to convince myself that the two major hills late in that section were pretty bad too. It's all relative. They would have been bad in any race in DC. They weren't so bad in that race. (Below left: E points out that his leg went from there to there.)

Bex had arranged for the remaining five of the seven Band of Outsiders to take a Happy Hour sailboat cruise on Lake Tahoe from Zephyr Cove in Nevada, the ending point of my leg the day before. The sailing was fabulous. We spent the ninety minutes pointing out "our" sections of the distant shoreline to each other and studying the contours of the rugged hills. The sinking sun shone brilliantly off the deep blue lake. (Below right: Bex had some varied terrain to run over.)

After we disembarked, we drove entirely around the lake, studying the race course for next year and stopped at a casino in Incline Village where we each had a $7.99 dinner of prime rib. Afterwards we were too tired to lay any wagers at the tables so we just went home and crashed. I left the next morning.