Part of the tramily trail negotiations include lots of give and take. Bear gives options. We take the ones we like. Sometimes, we counter-offer until a solution is reached. Bear’s original offer was to skip the Zero in Tuolumne and take a Double Zero in Mammoth with one of the days being a bus trip down to Yosemite Valley. We liked the Double Zero option right off and accepted that, but I wasn’t interested in spending 4+ hours riding a bus to Yosemite (as can be seen, we did end up with a zero in Tuolumne). All these negotiations resulted in was Bear losing a day of cushion from his, already tight, schedule.
Mammoth Lake is a cute, expensive, ski town. Bunny and I immediately liked it. There’s only 8,000 permanent residents even though there is easily housing for 100,000. Logic says real estate prices MUST be low. This turned out to be not true.
Although we did meet, and get to know, most of the local drunk residents of the town (thanks to the free trolley system), this mislead us to local real estate prices. Even the drunks in town are pretty wealthy (by our standards). The “ghetto” in town is a bit misleading. One of the more sober drunks told us they didn’t even realize they were living in the ghetto because they had spent $400,000 for their condo 20 years ago. He then was asked by the trolley driver to get off since children were starting to get on. His roommate graciously escorted him off the trolley and gently laid him in the grass outside of the complex before rejoining us on the trolley. Mental note, drunks sleep in the grass near the trolley stops in the ghetto.
Other than riding the trolley all around town to get a feel for what’s here, we did manage to perform the usual town chores: laundry, eat, shower, eat, resupply, eat, nap, and eat ice cream. By the time we had to check out and return to the trail, we were on a first name basis with 3 different trolley drivers and a half dozen drunks. Sadly, we didn’t meet any of the large house owners on the trolley system…go figure.
There are a couple of big benefits from traveling with Bear and Sassy—gluten intolerance and smooth talking. It works. Really!
Act 1: Gluten Intolerance: When ordering, Sassy makes it clear that she will paint the walls brown if she gets gluten. It’s really amazing how many servers don’t know what gluten is. We went out to a restaurant for supper and the only option open to Sassy was a salad with ahi tuna if they left the soy sauce off (why soy sauce has wheat in it…). The server brought out our meals and the soy sauce was all over the tuna. In fairness, it was the kitchen that screwed up. Easy solution, remake the salad and bring it out. Not so easy result, just take the salad away and never bring a new one out (now the server gets some blame for lack of follow up). The rest of us manage to eat our meals before Sassy gets her salad. In fact, the salad never makes an appearance.
Act 2: Smooth Talking: Bear gets into action. When we were seated, they actually walked us part way through the kitchen. Bear gets up and walks into the kitchen. I’m put on standby to watch for police being called. If police show up, the 3 of us disappear, eventually we’ll bail Bear out if he doesn’t show up at the hotel by 1a. Fortunately, we’ve never had to bail him out. While in the kitchen, Bear encounters the owner and explains the situation (over an hour and a half and no salad, gluten free, yada yada yada). The restaurant is slammed, the owner is frazzled, and Bear is majestically calm, yet persistent, in detail. I’ve seen it. He can go on and on, and gently drive the receiver down to dust. The owner needs to get to work. The easiest way (not involving police) to get this guy out of the kitchen is to comp all the meals. Bear comes back to the table and tells us we should leave ASAP. I was looking forward to dessert, but free also works.
I’m not 100% certain we didn’t “dine and dash” but police never showed up. I know this to be a fact, because we crossed the street for a meal for Sassy while the rest of us had dessert. 3 desserts, drinks for 4 and one meal was over $200. If you were to include the 3 meals we didn’t pay for, (thanks to another persona of Bear, Yogi), we’re looking at $400 for an evening meal. And these were average restaurants in Mammoth. Free shuttle included, Mammoth turns out to be outside of Bunny’s and my price range even if we were to opt for the ghetto side of town.
EFG