I woke up feeling fine, my cold having neatly passed onto poor Dylan in the night. The night before we stayed up until the date ticked over for the first time in months. We chatted to our fellow hostel mates from San Fran, picking their brains about their city. One was a young college student doing re-writes for his screenplay, the other a Filipino born first time skier taking advantage of the last now drifts on the mountains.

The next morning we woke to a homemade breakfast of strawberry muffins, freshly baked bread and orange juice. This and the walls of books, and lush indoor plants were tipping Lake Tahoe hostel into best hostel ever territory, alas no delightful animal companion though. Devon, our fairy god-baker merrily chatted to us while we devoured muffin after muffin, there was love in every bite. “When I’m not in the mood for baking I can taste the difference”

We delved into discussions of sustainability and economical inequality and I love the way she described the situation. “I feel society is like a pot of water on the stove, it’s boiling now and any moment it could explode over the sides.” I think that tension is what people concerned with sustainability in whatever form feel on a daily basis, most people feel nothing.

Then another relaxing day of mostly solo people/dog watching on the beach while Dylan looked after himself reading a book on Samurai Gardening, or at least that is what the title lead me to believe. Young things cavorted through hula hoops, children played the age old game of bury your friend to his neck in sand and skim boarders glided and sometimes stacked (to everyone’s internal delight) in the lakeside pools.