Hi, all.

Frank, your last post touched on a good point regarding the "reason" your W was not more strong with regards to telling you how she was feeling or what she wanted. I wonder how many WAS's did not communicate their concerns better for fear of losing the LBS.

It seems ironic, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The WAS shuts down or doesn't take stand for fear of losing their spouse. Yet the lack of communication makes it inevitable. And if things are not ironic enough; they are the ones that end up leaving!


OK, enough of that...so I'm wondering, is GAL safe? Listen (read) to this;

What a weekend. It started Friday night with a soccer scrimmage against S11's soccer team - parents against kids. Now, I've been exercising a lot since the bomb - I thought I was in pretty good shape. WRONG! Man, those kids have energy. I felt like someone had removed one of my lungs. About half way through the game I got my second wind and was OK. S11 and I had a ball. Most of the game I was paring up against him so there was not only the parent-kid competition but also a little father-son competition. Suffice it to say, old Dad still has some skills - didn't hurt that I was fouling him a little . Anyway, we had a lot of fun - ended up chasing S11 around the field to give him a big sweaty bear hug.

Saturday I could barely move, not only was I stiff but I think I pulled a groin muscle....it's the most action my groin has seen in a loooong time .

Around midday I decided to go up to Lake Tahoe with some friends. It was nice - I hadn't been there in years. W and I had our honeymoon there and used to go a ton, together. Lots of good memories there. We spent Saturday night hanging out, played a little blackjack, caught a show and had the best seafood buffet you could imagine.

Sunday we decided to take the gondola up to the top of Heavenly Valley Ski Resort - and this is where the real fun begins. So, we're nearing the halfway point up the mountain and the gondola comes to a stop. About five minutes later we're on our way again, only to stop a few more times on the way. Eventually, we get to the lookout and get off. We had planned on checking out the view before getting back on the gondola and heading up to the top, where we would get something to eat and have a few drinks. So we hang around for about half an hour before proceeding back to the gondola. This is when we find out the gondola has an electrical problem and is inoperable. There were still people on it that did not make it to the top.

They kept getting it going for short moments until everyone was off at the lookout - this took about an hour. We hung around for another hour before finding out that the gondola was dead, functioning on the last resort plan - running on generators to get the last people off. This, we were told was the last resort before having to get rescue crews in to extract people by repelling down from the gondola(s). So, how the heck do we get down? We then had to hike up the mountain to the top (where the bar is ). So off we go, hiking through the remnants of the last snow fall. We finally reach the top and now we wait, again. They only had two little pickup trucks at the top of the mountain and there were about 150of us, waiting to get down the mountain. Finally we get our chance to pile into a pickup truck and they drive us to one of the ski lifts (tram). OK, so it's been about four hours now and we are at the tram.

We pile into the tram and get to know each other very well (squished together). Now, we're informed that a wedding is taking place just below the tram so we cannot leave yet. We waited a half hour for the wedding to be done before we finally head down the mountain. Ah but it's not over yet. We get down the mountain and now have to wait for a bus to take us to where we started (about a lifetime ago). So the bus comes and we get back to home base. By this point it's several hours past when we wanted to depart so we pile into the car to head down the mountain.

For those of you who don't know the area, there are two ways to get back to the S.F. Bay Area from Tahoe – HWY 80 and HWY50. Seeing as we were at the south shore of the lake, HWY50 was the obvious choice. So we trucked off and headed over the summit. About 5 to ten miles down from the summit the traffic came to a stop – not a crawl but a turn your car off and walk around stop. Fortunately, someone came by and told us that cars were stopped for miles – we were fortunately near a side street and manage to get onto it. So for another hour we meandered through the mountains, navigating path around the traffic, towards home – and we did…somehow! It was quite an adventure, to say the least.

So tell me, is GAL safe? Take care all and keep up the good fight!

Fly little bird...fly