Tahoe Begins

I'm up at the Ridge Tahoe taking in altitude in all its finery. I don't mean to continue mentioning it, but 7,800' is high. Like wicked flippin' high. So after a swell opening ride today, I'm feeling only the slightly adversely affected by the altitude, and have been lounging like a champion the entire afternoon. But I'm feeling even happier that I arrived this early before the Tour to adapt. Three cheers for foresight!We often hype cycling as an environmentally friendly sport. I can't help but think that's a load of junk since we drive and fly to races, yada yada yada. So it is ever the slightest big satisfying to double up the agenda today - I dropped my friend's car off at the maintenance place for the CA smog test and then banged out my ride directly from there. Good work me!This was the first photo I snapped today. I'm riding a bit south of Tahoe at this point; since we all know the big guy lives in the North Pole he's clearly just trying to throw us off the trail. Can't fool me, Santa.Continuing around this loop, I discovered that this is high desert. I don't actually know if this is high desert, but I've heard that phrase thrown around a lot lately and I can only imagine that this place has to be precisely that for two very clear reasons. It's 1) high and 2) very dry... ergo, desert'y. I then stumbled upon a stream... figuratively. I stayed dry and did not actually stumble into the stream. These guys have it right: fishing, butt in beach chair, beer in hand, mountains in the background, cloudless blue sky above, and nary a car driving by to disrupt the serenity. Just annoying cyclists taking photos.From there it was back to the Lake. Well, back to the lake after a 40+ minute climb and righteously speedy descent, that is. You see the Keep Tahoe Blue stickers everywhere, which as a pretend tree-hugger is something I can endorse. I can also endorse playing with the color accent feature of my camera to keep the sky, my SuperSix, and Lake Tahoe BLUE.AAAAaaand alternatively, here's the lake sans color accent and sans one bicycle. Purty.