Saturday, June 12, 2010

catching up with April (part 2)

April showers bring May...snow?

Seriously. That was pretty much the theme of late April. Just three days after we got home from Texas, we were back on the road for a conference in Nevada. This should have been a pretty easy gig to reach, but storms during the last week of April dumped massive amounts of snow on the Sierra. So this was the scene we encountered as we started out that last Thursday in April. We figured the weather had settled down significantly, since the reports of Tuesday and Wednesday that had people chaining up and being stuck for hours while the Pass was closed down. The whole way up the mountain, we enjoyed the beautiful and freshly snow-covered landscape, thinking how lucky we were to have missed the snow and ice.

And then, just when we thought we were going to scoot up the mountain without hitting any rain  or snow...
...here it came. It was pretty light at first, but within minutes, we were in almost white-out conditions. So crazy for April!
At least we didn't have to chain up. We finally made it to the "biggest little city in the world" around 5:30.

Our hotel was right on the edge of the Truckee River. Great views of the city at night and the mountains and river during the day.  Too bad I had to spend so many hours in it on Friday morning finishing up my paper. Over-committed is my middle name. I'm going to stop that. Really, I am.

 





I am really intrigued by this last supper-ish painting (super bad  photo), which hangs in the bar where Dorothy and the Tin Man, RT, CD, LM, TH and I hung out for way too many hours and drinks on Friday and Saturday night. And where the waitresses managed to short our bill by quite a bit, but wouldn't accept help with it or more $ from TH, even when he went back down to double check with them (yep--that is TH). 

I have to say, though, that the smoke in that hotel was brutal. At the banquet, TH and I were seated next to the Dean of our conference host, who told us that she's been to waaay too many meetings in the local casino hotels and that this one is well known for its bad ventilation system. It really made me appreciate the piped in fragrances that the Vegas casinos force through their systems--even though they seem extremely oppressive when one is subjected to them for too long. Nonetheless, they do not smell like stale tobacco.  I'm glad we are going back to the same campus next year (how would you like to have this view from atop your campus parking structure?), but I would be more than happy to never again see (breathe?) that hotel. 

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