Week 4-South Lake Tahoe

I’ll start off by saying this: never bring a Chihuahua to a hockey game.  Said Chihuahua will howl, shake, growl, and attempt to attack the hockey players whenever the crash into the wall of the ice rink.  The ref will also give you weird looks and your friends will have to pretend they have Down syndrome in order for you all not to get kicked out for bringing a dog.

Let me back up and explain how we got here. 

My best friend moved to South Lake Tahoe when I was 12.  I’ve been going to Tahoe every winter since then.  However I’ve been Buster’s official owner for less than a year and he has never been.  I decided to drive up for a 3 days week this past week since there hasn’t been any snow.  (My driving skills leave a lot to be desired even in the driest of weather so this seemed to be a prudent decision). 

What I had forgotten was that Buster gets carsick on long trips.  Like very carsick, like his tongue lolls out of his mouth and he pants like he is lost in the Sahara. I seatbelt him in so he can’t move as much but it hasn’t helped yet.  So after a miserable 3 hours of listening to him pant and whine we finally made up the mountain to Ally’s house.

Or commune, should I say.  The house itself has 4 dwellers, one of the out buildings houses Aria’s (the landlords) father, and the other building is his music room.  Her father is also a “car guy” so when Ally said to just pull up to the house with all the cars, she wasn’t kidding.

One roommate is never home at the beginning of the month due to the fact that he spends most of his rent money on ecstasy (hey, it’s Tahoe).

Aria, at 26 years old has just retired, Ally is a yoga instructor, and Laney is a waitress and probably makes 4 times as much money as all of them combined in one night of work.  Good for her.

Upon arrival Buster decided to dig up the carpet in multiple rooms, prompting Aria to consider replacing the carpet…..let me just add that I refused to sleep on this carpet and I sleep with a dog every night that pees on himself.  So I’d say Buster did her a favor.

A friend of the commune was playing in a C league hockey game that afternoon so Ally, Aria, and I put on about half the clothes we owned, wrapped Buster up in a sweater and bundled him in a blanket.  I carried him in like a baby.

We were 3 of maybe 7 spectators at this event.  “They lose EVERY time,” said Aria of Nick’s team-The Green Team.  But that didn’t stop her from screaming and swearing the whole time.  

Buster lay still for MAYBE 5 seconds.  He was shaking due to the fact that we were in a freezing cold ice arena but also the echo of the puck slamming against the wall and players shouting at each other freaked him out to the point of him deciding to started barking and growling at them each time they ran into the wall in front of us.  Which is funny because he is barely bigger than the hockey puck.

This caused the players to start looking at us funny so Aria began to start barking and acting retarded in between screaming at the players to get up faster each time they fell down-not the most PC of hippies. 

Eventually I had to put him in the car because he was totally flipping out.  The Green Team lost just as Aria predicted.  We made dinner, which was vegan (for Aria who is vegan), peanut, soy, and meat free (for Ally who has food allergies and a Mexican parasite) and totally bland (for Laney who is Crone’s disease). I’m not sure how much of this what bullshit and how much was true although considering how much time Laney spent in the bathroom after dinner, her food particulars might have been valid.

When we drove up to Tahoe there was literally ZERO snow on the ground.  Pretty odd for February.  The next morning we were in a blizzard.  Everything was white.  I let Buster outside to pee and he took 2 steps out the door and U-turned right back in the house.  So we left at home to dig up more nasty carpet and walked to the Key’s Café where we spent 2 hours talking to some hot ski bum guy, an old eavesdropper who talked way to close to Aria’s face, and the ski bum’s weird old 50-year-old friend.  We also enjoyed soy free chai tea, acai bowls with granola and bananas, and gluten free oatmeal.

The rest of the day consisted of yoga, more bland food, shoveling the driveway about 3 times, and meeting more random potheads.  Oddly enough there was no actually smoking of marijuana. It probably wasn’t vegan or something.  I was too busy drinking a bottle of wine to myself anyway to care.