STEEEEZ

After seven hours driving, and a six hour stop in Davis, we finally got to Tahoe yesterday evening. Having driven across the state and seen many towns from Fort Bragg to Tahoe I can easily say Tahoe is the coolest place I've been. For those of you who don't know, Tahoe is a lake, a big lake. Wendy's brother lives in South Lake Tahoe, which as you might imagine is on the southern edge of the lake which also puts him right next to the border with Nevada. We arrived around maybe 6:30pm and considering nobody was really that hungry, we did the only thing we could do in that situation. We hit the casinos.

Wendy apparently has very good luck with the slot machines and has won quite a bit of money in the past, so we scouted around and checked out a few of the casinos. Wendy tried a few machines and won a little but not much. Being that this was my first time in a casino I felt I should gamble a dollar, so I did. Actually I think I may have gambled 3 dollars, but not in some kind of 'I'll win on the next one' frenzy, I was just feeling a bit stupid standing watching Wendy play. I lost two dollars trying out machines and then I managed to make my third game last for quite a while. I finally cashed out at the princely sum of $1.85.

The manager was unavailable to present me with my winnings

Not worth the paper

Probably the most fun to be had in any of the casinos was just watching the people there. There were elderly people sitting at the slot machines who looked like zombies, young people at the bars who looked like ten year olds in their Sunday best, and there were plenty of drunken people. The drunken people were actually pretty impressive to watch, seeing how they moved from slot machine to slot machine, using each one as a support while they carefully calculated their trajectory to the next one. I was also impressed by the number of women in the casino who blatantly had no interest in gambling and appeared to be dressed with something else altogether in mind. Every casino we went into was like a tiny eco system with various species of gambler, each with their own little traits. I felt like the David Attenborough of the casino world watching over the big screaming apes of the Roulette tables and the wide eyed Bush Babies of the slot machines. It turned out that one of the other casinos in town gave out free stuff to people who had a birthday in that month and as Peter had just celebrated his birthday we were all for getting some free stuff. On the way back to the car Wendy insisted I take a picture of this truck just to make a point of how stupid people over here can be when it comes to their choice of automobile.

And Wendy is six foot five!

We had dinner, hung around in the casino for a little bit longer and then headed home after a very long day.

This morning we were able to get a good look at the front of the house which CT (Wendy’s brother) has been working on this summer. It looks really good with some really cool wood and granite combinations. Then we moved around the side where we saw this:

STEEEEZ

Suh-weeeeet! Wendy was, as ever, eager to suggest that we take some photos of me in the driver’s seat... wearing a cowboy hat. Sadly I didn’t have one on me, but ‘luckily’ CT did, and what would you know, it fit me. yay. You get two pictures.

All aboard the gay bus!

I forgot to mention we saw Woody from Toy Story

We found Fievel Moskowitz Hiding in the boot

After a photo session that went on far longer than it should have we decided to go get a closer view of the lake so we drove around to Emerald Bay. There are some pretty cool things around there like a ‘Viking house’ that was built for someone with more money than sense back in the 1920s. I got lots of cool photos.

This picture is a little squashed, you may want to stretch it back again

We also found this phone box in the woods.

I checked the coin return for change

So it has been an interesting couple of days and who knows what wacky adventures I’ll get up to next. Check back soon for the next riveting instalment. You never know who might turn up, maybe even Wicket W. Warrick.

'Weptaar!'