Let me just say how lovely it is to visit people who have mountain bikes you can borrow, in a place where you can literally ride them out the door and be on trails in 10 minutes.
That’s what being in Tahoe with my little brother and his wife (!!) was like: while I was driving us back up there in our little rental car, James was texting with my brother, who asked if I wanted to bike with him and his friend the next day. Though we weren’t going to be to Tahoe until late that night, all I had to do was wake up early the next morning and get dressed; Alex had already packed up an extra bike for me with water and snacks and a helmet to borrow.
(Let me also insert how super lovely it is when I can just step into an adventure that someone else has already planned — as the general adventure-instigator in my life, this almost never happens for me, but I love it.)
.
(A 10-minute ride from my brother’s house!:)
.
So, Alex and I went mountain biking early in the morning (his friend bailed), and it was fantastic. So much so that later in the day, I took James back there, him on Alex’s bike, so I could show him too. We took a long and rambling ride on tons of singletrack around South Lake Tahoe, just going whatever direction seemed interesting at any junction and eventually working our way back home.
.
(we found this sweet picnic table on top of the world while we were adventuring:)
.
The next day, having proved to ourselves that we could indeed (sort of;) wield mountain bikes, we went for a longer trek on the Tahoe Flume Trail, which — OMG — was so, so amazing. Basically, we rode up a big 4-mile hill, then bombed down to Marlette Lake, which was pretty damn great. And just when we were feeling like how could this get any better, we turned a corner and — BAM! — there was all of Lake Tahoe way down below us, mountains all around.
It was amazing.
.
(Marlette Lake, feeling pretty happy)
.
(then getting nicer and more singletrack-y; picture by James)
.
(then BAM! Lake Tahoe from the top of the world! Though I don’t think ANY of either of our pictures do justice to how awesome the next few miles of this was)
.
So, it was a pretty rockin’ good time in Tahoe, not only because my little bitty brother got married to the coolest lady ever (awwwww <3) but also cuz we got to turn it into a sweet little bike adventure too. I wish we could do this kind of thing in Portland!
.
(and thanks as always to my little bro and my sweet new sister-in-law for trusting us with their super fancy bikes:) SO MUCH FUN!!)
Trails directly from the door. It’s the one thing I miss about New Hampshire and really don’t like about the PDX metro area. From FG I can bike 9 miles to Hagg Lake for 13 miles of singletrack. Otherwise it is a drive to Stub, Tillamook Forest or anything else.
Oh! Your comment snuck past me somehow! But yeah, this is a very sad thing about Portland to me too. I frequently think that if I wanted to actually get into mountain biking, I’d need to buy not only a bike but also a car too. Or, more likely, just get really creative about buses/carpooling/mountain biking far on roads first, and it never really seems worth it even though I love it so when I have the chance to do it somewhere else.