Little bit of Texas in Lake Tahoe

WARNING: This blog contains male nudity. If you are offended by bare bottoms, taut thighs exposed in all their glory and backs rippling with muscles, please go no further. If not, please allow me to begin… and enjoy, you dirty dogs.

Well, if travel is supposed to change you then I think I’ve had my first large slice of culture I’m unfamiliar with. Whether I’ve changed from it, I’m not sure, but staying with a 70-year-old Texan man in Lake Tahoe certainly was an experience we’ll both remember.

Our first day in Lake Tahoe, we couldn’t get in contact with our potential hosts Gene and Lynn (Sean’s parents’ friends from a group bike ride) so, despite the cold and wind, we hired mountain bikes and decided to go exploring! It warmed up and this was one of the most spectacular trails either of us have ever ridden. The Flume trail overlooked Lake Tahoe and snow-capped mountains nearly the whole way, it was magical.

Not a bad view, pity it was four-miles straight up to get to the top -ouch!

The blue waters of Lake Tahoe are incredible, if it wasn't so cold you'd jump in fo sho

Once we got to Marlette Lake, we had a quick bite of lunch (a muesli bar and pretzels, we’re high rollers) and then things got interesting…

Despite the lake being around 5 degreees and snow patches melting all around us, Sean decided a little skinny dip was in order. I no complain. But I do laugh a lot and take lots of glorious pictures, here are some for you dear reader and don’t say i don’t look after you.

Don't be shy. Get thee to the water, pronto!

Whooopeee! Nearly fell in, but saved himself last minute... nice buns eh? Don't pretend you weren't looking...

And finally, he wades in. He'll later tell the Texan he got in waist deep but y'all know he didn't get "the guys" wet

So quite the adventure we had. The nudity was definitely the highlight for me, oh how I laughed. Especially when i ran up the road with his clothes. Giggle giggle.

So when we finished, it was time to meet Gene! We figured he was a cool guy being a friend of Liz and Gerard’s and look, I’m going to go with “different” for my adjective of choice. I’ll spin a few yarns about our time with Geno and y’all decide for yourself. One important factor – we had a lot of laughs. And a lot of shocked “did he really just say that” shared looks with each other.

The 70-year-old former Texan cowboy turned IBM electrical engineer guru turned ski-instructing retiree in Lake Tahoe, welcomed us into his home while his wife Lynn was away with some friends. In the first hour I heard more f*cks come out of his mouth than I’d heard in my whole life (even in the Scoop office!).

I think Gene sensed that I wasn’t a common user of the f-word and decided I needed lightening up. In the middle of a conversation he asked if i drank Jack Daniels seeing as I wasn’t having a beer.

“No, wine is fine,” I say politely, taking a sip out of the glass of red (which we brought as a gesture… it was a nice bottle of Australian cab sav but when I presented it to him I might as well have peed on his floor “real men don’t drink waaaahn, real men drink beer” and that was that).

“You haven’t tried my Jack Daniels, I’ll go git it,” he says. “I got it off the black market, this stuff is 85% you’ll love it!”

He pours us both a large slug of it (meaning him and I, somehow Sean is getting off scot-free laughing silently at me), chinks my glass before down his went.

“Aaahhh,” He says, smacking his lips and gritting his teeth. “Go on sweetheart, it’s good!”

I got about half of it down in one go and oh how it burnt. I felt the burn right from my tongue to my belly button but managed to smile afterwards. I think I was drunk just from sniffing the glass.

But fortunately, it wasn’t just I who would be made to try Gene’s house specialities. As he chopped up jalapenos straight out of the tin, I noticed Sean twitching at the realisation it was going in our dinner.

“Oooh are they hot?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, they are when they’re raw, but they lose some heat when you cook ’em,” says Gene. “But they’re good raw too,” he says, before cutting one in half and knocking it back.

“You should try it Sean,” I say sweetly. Gene was such a macho-man and I knew Sean wouldn’t want to lose face. Gene loved the idea, Sean tried to refuse politely but in the end agreed to it when Gene said we should both try. Drats. But it was worth seeing Sean go bright red and he only had beer to wash it back with haha.

Gene put us through a few tests through out the weekend. He took us on a 10km hike with his friend Jim which was good fun. We got a snap from the top of one of the ski slopes (out of action as it is summer despite a few snow patches left).

Beautiful pine trees and ponderosas behind us and of course Lake Tahoe - we want to go back in winter to hit the slopes!

He shared a few more pearls of wisdom with us over the weekend and so I don’t forget, I’ve typed them up because they were kind of hilarious and kind of hard to believe that a 70-year-old bloke was saying this to us.

Gene’s three rules for living a long and healthy life;

1. Have a look at yourself naked everyday in the mirror, if you think you look gross then do somethin’ about it

2. Have a good “grunt” everyday. Seeing Sean and my perplexed faces, he went on to explain – “You gotta eat, so you gotta get it out and you gotta have a good one everyday or somethin’s wrong man!”

3. Make sure you have sex every day and thank god for viagra. I laughed at this and said “oh yeah the little blue pills hahaha”, trying to make light of it all, to which he said “No, no – they’re aquamarine”… oh god, he actually does practice what he preaches. Can I have a little “ew” here? Way too much information.

Oh how we did learn, Sean and I, are semi-innocent little ears thoroughly tarnished over the course of our weekend with Geno. I also like when Sean tried to tell Gene how he went in the lake. “How deep did you go?” he asks. “Oh about waist-deep,” Sean says, chest puffed out. “Your d*ck must have shrivelled up to a matchstick, I don’t know if you’ll ever get him back after that!” Gene throws back at him. Ego deflates, chest depuffs.

Very funny indeed and we were very fortunate to be shown around Lake Tahoe courtesy of Gene. He wouldn’t let us take a photo of him, but he was photographer for us at one of his favourite spots at Lake Tahoe this morning.

Us during our final minutes in Lake Tahoe, what a spectacular place

It was so nice to stay in a real house for a couple of nights and have some different company. We had pizza night with Gene’s friends (5 bachelors! Aye, was I outnumbered), got to play with his friend Ron’s giant golden retriever Bear (the biggest, fluffiest dog ever – adorable) and he told us we had to call our mums on his cheap phone rate. Thank you Gene, doubtful you’ll ever read this as you told us looking at other people’s photos was less appealing than poking your eyes out, but we had fun and you were a super host. Super-crazy most of the time, but a super host.

Today we made the 8-hour drive to the Mormon capital of the US, Salt Lake City, and are going to have a quick explore tomorrow morning before heading off again for Jackson to get ready for the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone!

PS Gene’s three rules for life – our mums and dads are not allowed to practice rule number three under any circumstances. That is all.

Lisa and Sean xoxo

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