Weekend Log

Great mixture of business and friends this weekend.

Friday night, an old friend and client of mine Colin Gilboy returned to Truckee from Heber City, Utah where he and his wife Kim and son Sean moved about 4 years ago.  Colin came back this year so that he could lead one of the hikes that were featured in the annual Donner Party Hike program that is put on by the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce. 

Colin is an expert on the poor party that crawled over the Sierra during the winter of 1846 – 1847,  probably one of the worst years ever as far as depth of snow up here.  The pathetic midwesterners chose to take the Hasting’s Cutoff instead of sticking to the regular route on the Oregon Trail and instead of getting to Sacramento quicker, they paid the ultimate price by loosing many members of their wagon train.

It was great to see Colin.  His normal job is owner of a website called www.4specs.com where he categorizes all sorts of building materials — he calls it sort of an online yellow pages or for those of us who remember — an online sweets catalog.  Check it out.  Colin says that his business is booming!!  Horray for you Colin, Kim and Sean.  Thanks for dinner!!

Saturday I spent all day up in the beautiful Sierra Valley trying to help my brother-in-law Chuck find a little palace for himself.  He lives in Paris, France right now but is anticipating his retirement and ideally he would like to live here 6 months of the year — in France the other 6.  So we combed the countryside looking for a place.  We found quite a few acceptable places, all priced under $250K.  There definetly are some good deals to be had up there.  The day was cloudy and rainy — a relief for all of us here in Northern California. 

Following all of that work, we went to the Willinghams for dinner and to play a game where the leader picks a word out of the dictionary that no one in the group knows.  The leader writes the definition down on a piece of paper.  Then the other players are told to make up a definition for that word.  After everyone has had a chance to write that down, the leader reads them all out loud and all players (except the leader) vote on which definition is the correct one.  Sounds confusing but after you play one round, you get it quick!!  Lots of fun and laughs.  The trout that Jim cooked was spectacular as was the Amaretto cake that Manon made. 

This morning (Sunday) back up to Sierra Valley to look at more homes. The air is crisp and the drive up the valley was so beautiful with the remaining water drops glistening on the trees in the early morning sun.  Man, are we lucky or what?