On Your Mark
We are lying in a comfortable king-size bed in the Edgewood Lodge on Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada. It is a full-service resort, which has all the trappings of a Four-Star resort. The gatehouse with guard, the valet parking only, the vaulted yet modern lobby that screams Lake Tahoe and the magnificent views from its lakeside perch. When we check in we get a cute silk gauze bag with hand sanitizer and masks in deference of COVID. To be clear, this is Nevada, not California, and client service for tourists is everything in Nevada. Luxury hotels like this are smart enough to know that their clients are smarter, college-educated people who are taking the COVID pandemic very seriously. At the same time they want to cater to their clients whims, which include gathering in groups and generally partying. Volume also counts since social distancing wrecks havoc with restaurant seating and F&B is a big revenue item in the hospitality business.
This room is uber-comfortable with a spacious bathroom, an efficient room with all the amenities, most notably a top-quality and luxurious bed with excellent pillows. I admit that I like this room better than any we’ve stayed in on this trip, but let’s review the room rates with the thought that I generally looked for the best room available (60 days in advance) in the areas we wanted to go. The range is quite noticeable:
• Fireside Inn – Cambria on the ocean – $330
• Arcata Hotel – Suite in old small-town hotel – $178
• Edgewater Inn – Coos Bay “motel” on inlet- $188
• Hampton Inn – Astoria, Oregon on Columbia River – $320
• Skamania Lodge – Stevenson WA in the Columbia Gorge – $385
• Diamond Lake Lodge – National Park Service cabin – $270
• Surprise Valley Hot Springs – middle of nowhere – $125
• Edgewood Lodge – 4-star Tahoe Belle – $614
So, here’s the thing, none of these was unacceptable for one night though some were uncomfortable enough to cost a night’s sleep to some of the four of us. I think it was just coincidental, but by mixing up the good with the less than good we enjoyed a pleasant trip. In terms of food, we adhered quite strictly to either dining outdoors (the weather was quite cooperative) or ordering for pick-up to eat in (3 of 8 dinners). The most expensive dinner (drinks and/or wine for 3 of us at each dinner) was $266 or $67/head. We will have driven 2,800 miles, and if we use the USG standard of $0.53/mile to cover gas and depreciation, that means we spent $1,484 on travel. Therefore, overall, a ten-day vacation for two for under $5,000 is quite something. That’s attractive enough to make me think we need to do more road trip vacations (since that’s about all we can do anyway).
Kim and I are good “get there” travelers when we need to be. We have decided to get in the car at 6am (Kim will sleep more in the car) and drive the 491 miles in eight hours, arriving home at about 3pm, allowing for gas stops only. We will do what we always do and eat in the car and use our new mobile fridge to stay adequately hydrated. There is little on this route (save the Japanese internment camp from WWII, at Manzanar- we will do that another time) that we have not already seen. We miss our home and are anxious to get back to check on things. There is also work piling up as it always seem to on vacation. I read that as meaning that I’m less retired than I had planned.
On my side of the ledger, I have venture company to fund merge for the next stage of development. I have taken on a new expert case and have five hundred documents waiting for me to review and a fifty or do page rebuttal report to write. I have a prior case which has postponed its arbitration testimony to next week and might take up some of my weeks for dome time to come. And then there is the added case which I was interviewed for that I suspect I may get and that dill make August a very busy month indeed. Oh yes, and I really should prepare my lectures for the course I am set to teach business school students in late September. It seems now that it will be done virtually from home, but it will be fifteen hours of class time and a good rule of thumb is five hours of prep for each hour of class. Since I have given similar courses (on project financing), I suspect I can name that tune in 3-4 hours per hour of class. That still means at least 45 hours of prep to be done over the next seven weeks. That’s not impossible or overwhelming, but add to the rest and it makes for a busy few months.
Kim, for her part is also busy with work. Specifically, she has been asked by the Honeywell Center in her home town of Wabash, to sing a song to commemorate the Center’s importance to her life in the arts and the lives of the entire community in the arts. That is no mean feat. She will sing a little-known Cole Porter show tune (Porter came from around Wabash). She sang it at the Cole Porter commemorative show at Carnegie Hall a few years ago. The only other singer of note who sings the song is Barbara Streisand. That all doesn’t happen. She has to get her accompanist, a videographer and probably her producer (who just happens to be staying st our house right now) to help her pull it together. You know what they say about what it takes to get to Carnegie Hall….practice, practice, practice. So, yes,she also has to practice this wordy, quick and arcane song. That’s called work.
We are both very happy with our road trip vacation,but we are both equally anxious to get back into the saddle of our respective roles. I think of the long ride tomorrow to be our transition of reflection. It’s like a sprinter shaking out his limbs and getting himself positioned to run his race. So, here we are in early August and all I can think to say is “On your Mark.”