"Lake Tahoe"  (mf, cheat)

"It is now safe to turn your computer off."

I had just finished answering my last e-mail. It was to Bronwen one of the
fearless leaders of the erotic writer's guild. (Which I am a proud junior member
of.) I had made a post to our Internet newsgroup that I was going to Lake Tahoe
for a week, and she had asked me if going to Lake Tahoe was a good thing. I
thought that it was. Even if I did have to do some work, I'd get some skiing in
too. So I had responded; I'll let you know when I get back."

As I punched the off button on the computer, I looked up at the clock on the wall
of my bedroom and noticed that I'd been messing around a little too long and
realized that if I wanted to make my 4:30 flight I'd better get my butt in gear.

:-:

As I pulled out of the long driveway to my apartment house and headed toward
Portland up highway 20, I made a mental list of the stuff I was taking with me.
This whole trip was kinda weird. My boss had called me only the day before to
inform me we were going to have a "Corporate Retreat" in a little town called
Stateline, just north of Lake Tahoe. He said that the meetings would be held on
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Then on Saturday we'd take the day off and go
skiing on mount Rose. I think the whole thing was supposed to make us more like a
team.

Well, as long as I have my skis on the roof rack I am up for anything. This was
like a vacation for me. I love to travel. Any excuse is a good one as far as I'm
concerned. I'd fly to Buffalo New York just for the fun of flying there. (That
may give you an idea of the lengths I'd go just to travel)

I don't get to travel a lot and being 20, I don't have loads of cash. Basically I
live in three rooms in a huge old farm house/mansion off of highway 20 on the
edge of the Deschutes National forest. It's a neat old house but my space in it
is "small" but only costs me $350 a month. Since I own my 1977 Ford Explorer
(built a year before I was born) and my computer belongs to the company I work
for, my actual expenses are pretty low. But somehow I always seem to live just a
little over my income. Contact with the outside world is pretty limited when the
biggest city near you is a place called Bend. (It's OK that you probably have
never heard of Bend. It's sort of in the middle of Oregon and there's not a lot
of reason for anyone to know that it even exists)

At any rate, I was stoked! Heading up the fog shrouded road to fun and adventure,
with a slight guilt pang that my boyfriend Jeff couldn't come with me.  But then
this was business and I'd be working for three days (sort of -- wink, wink). He
was in the middle of a project just then anyway and had been up in Seattle for
almost a week when my boss called. (Jeff's a Structural Engineer)

:-:

I made Portland just fine. Got parked and through the construction wracked
terminal in time to be one of  the blessed first thirty passengers on Southwest
flight 1709 to Sacramento. (They don't have assigned seats, and even though I
like people, I hate having to sit in a middle seat)  We boarded and left right on
time.

My plan was to catch up on reading several of my friends Internet stories via the
old laptop during the 1 1/2-hour flight to Sacramento.  I was sitting next to an
older man (40ish) and made a special effort to in- troduce myself to him and get
to know him a little. He turned out to be a salesman, and also a reverend; he had
his own church. His little congregation met at his house each Sunday.

I usually draw my neighbor into reading my stories during a flight,  unless I'm
traveling with Jeff, then we keep each other busy.  I like to get their reaction,
it's fun to let them know that I write erotic stories for the Internet. And it's
fun to see if they get aroused sitting there beside me while we read a selected
story together. (I've had several interest- ing things happen doing this on a
flight, which I should probably write about sometime)  But I didn't think that my
salesman/preacher would appreciate what I was up to, so I  positioned the
computer screen toward the window so he couldn't read it.

I was determined to read without making any outward signs of what I was doing.
Luckily I had al- ready read Woodsmokes story (It really makes me crazy when
someone uses my name in their story. For some reason that turns me on to imagine
myself in a story.) But as I read the story list, no one else had done that and I
was able to get through every story without giving myself away, although some of
those stories did make me kind of crazy.

Well, everything went all right and we landed at Sacramento International at
6:45PM. But as I was walking through the rather seedy looking terminal an
announcement came over the loudspeaker. "Kristen Becker, please pick up a white
courtesy phone." That surprised me -- nothing like that had ever happened to me
before. As a matter of fact I wasn't sure what a white courtesy phone was. But
being smarter that the average blonde, I quickly figured out that the white
phones on the wall must be what they meant.

It turned out that Andreaus (The big boss) had a son who was also attending our
little retreat.  And he wanted me to meet him at the Southwest Baggage claim and
bring him with me to the meeting. Well... I have to admit I was put off a little
by this. Apparently Antonio (Seems like all the men in my boss' family have "An"
names of some kind or other) wouldn't be 18 for two more months, and therefore
couldn't rent a car on his own. So I was stuck. It's hard to say no to the boss,
especially when he's covering all your expenses for a day on the slopes, if you
know what I mean.

I was wearing my black cold weather outfit that day and when I walked into the
baggage claim I got a good response from the men in the area. (I make a point of
wearing tight outfits. It's fun to watch the lengths some men will go to, to get
a good look at some leg. I'm not a really bad tease or anything, I just know that
I look good in tight pants.)

And there was Antonio standing by the carousel undressing me with his eyes. I was
taken aback a little by the unrelenting stare he was giving my body. And I do
mean my body, I don't think he looked into my face until I was standing right in
front of him offering him a hand to shake.

Looking back it was kind of funny, because when I shook his hand it was real
sweaty, and he realized at that moment that he'd been staring like an idiot, and
became super embarrassed.

His dad is around 50 or so and has gray hair so I had no idea what color it had
been when he was younger. Putting aside the sweaty handshake Antonio's most
outstanding feature was his lovely auburn-red hair. Lots of wavy hair, the kind
that seems to fall into place without doing anything to it. (I suspected it was
an expensive haircut.) He was also quite hand- some, but then I find most men
handsome in one way or another.

:-:

After the introduction was over we grabbed a luggage-cart and filled it with our
baggage and ski's, then headed toward the busses that take you to the rentals. As
we went out the terminal doors I realized that the weather had turned ugly. You
could actually see the clouds moving overhead. The wind is something else in
Sacramento; it cuts right through you, even in cold weather clothing. But I
didn't mind, I just walked faster and made Antonio run after me to try to keep
up.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little bit pushy. It's not that I'm rude or
mean in the slightest, I just have a hard time with slow people. I'm very
athletic and feel that men have a big advantage over women strength wise, and I
have little patience with men who complain and can't keep up with me. I gave
little Antonio a hard time when he began to whine at me about the pace I had set,
so I walked faster... I also said something that offended his masculinity and
after that he was pretty sullen for a while. But things livened up when we got
into our 1998 Blazer and it wouldn't start.

I had to get an attendant to take a look at the vehicle for me. He kind of pissed
me off when he took the attitude that I was just another dumb blonde who didn't
know anything about cars. Well... anyway it was a bad fuse. It took him awhile to
figure it out. I was ready for another car, but they didn't have any more
four-wheel drive vehicles on the lot, and I thought with the crummy weather it
would be wise to stay with a four-wheel drive since we were going to do some
mountain driving.

The short version is: We finally left the Sacramento airport about 7:30PM heading
south on Interstate 5. I had no trouble finding the junction to Hwy. 50 and then
pushed the pedal to the metal. South Tahoe is a little over two hours from
Sacramento, and I wanted to get in to the hotel long before 10PM, so I was
hurrying things a bit.

About Plaserville the fog and snow started. The snow began falling like we were
in the middle of a blizzard. I had to slow down to fifty just to see twenty feet
in front of me. (So much for 10PM) I started to get worried when I saw the fog
thickening. Slowing the Blazer down to twenty-five we began to creep up the
two-lane road.

I knew we were in trouble just after we passed Kyburz and the side of the hill to
the right of slid down into the river that ran along the side of the road. There
had been a forest fire sometime in the past year or two and the soil erosion was
obvious even in the dark. I stopped the truck in the middle of the snow covered
road as we watched the soil and tree stumps fall all the way into the rushing
river. It was dark and the only reason we'd seen the hill go, was that the area
had been framed in the headlights of the Blazer when it let loose. Realizing that
the weather was turning worse I pushed on - hoping to make the remaining
twenty-nine miles to Lake Tahoe before any other nasty things happened.

About ten miles farther on the big one happened. The truck stopped. I mean
everything stopped. The headlights when out, the engine stopped and we were
sitting in the middle of the road. I kept trying to start the engine, but after
turning the key fifty times with nothing happening I finally stopped. Antonio in
his helpful male adolescent way suggested that it might be a fuse.

I knew that! It just hadn't occurred to me yet.

So I scrunched down to look at the area the rental guy had been working on and
started to pick at the panel that covered it. Well... I couldn't seem to get it
off, and finally Antonio got tired of me hitting the dashboard and swearing at
the plastic covering and got out of the passenger seat and slogged around the
Blazer. Opening my door he leaned in and flipped the hatch open. He flicked a
Bick lighter to see what he was doing and soon found the bad fuse. As if he knew
what he was doing he kept moving them around until the headlights flashed on.

I turned the ignition and the engine started up immediately.

And promptly stopped again right after Antonio reclaimed the passenger seat.
Cursing, he moved to open his door again, but I grabbed his arm and said, "just
climb over me and I'll move to your side. The snow's getting too deep, and it's
colder than the North Pole out there." Little Antonio hesitated,  then did what I
had suggested. I hadn't planned on him rubbing his face across my chest though,
but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn't punch him in the nuts to wipe
the dumb smile off his face.

(Here's another one of those "To make a long story short" statements.) We
couldn't get the Blazer to start again. Antonio guessed that the lower rated
fuses just popped their little filament thingys when- ever we turned on the
ignition. So there we were, stuck! The snow was coming down in buckets and the
wind was whistling through a crack that I had left open on the driver's side
window and couldn't close because they were power windows. (And they no longer
worked) Needless to say it only took ten minutes for all the residual heat to be
sucked out of the truck.

It was about this time that I noticed that no other cars had gone by us for
almost a half-hour. I could barely see the tire tracks that were filling with
snow in front of us. (We learned later that when that hill had slid down into the
river it had created a temporary damming effect. That had brought the water level
up to overflow the pavement. The authorities soon came on the situation and
stopped the up hill traffic until morning, as well as at the top of the mountain
too, and rerouted everyone another way. But what really PO'ed me, was that no-one
checked the road to make sure it was empty. I guess they figured that everyone
would keep traveling, and the authorities at the slide couldn't see us because we
were miles up the road.)

I figured *something* was wrong because Hwy. 50 is a comparatively important
artery between Lake Tahoe and the outside world. We waited another hour before I
decided to put on the rest of my ski clothes over the stuff I was already
wearing. This is when I found out that sweet little Antonio only had a shaving
kit and his laptop in his carry-on. He told me that his dad had everything and
that he was supposed to pick his stuff up at the consignor once we arrived. (Oh
great!)

I'm 5'4" and at my heaviest I've never weighed more than 115 (well maybe 120 for
six months back in the eighth grade). Antonio on the other hand was an inch over
6 feet and probably weighed 175 lbs. (Yes he is big for his age isn't he?) Which
wasn't a problem before we got stuck in a fog blown snowstorm with sub-zero
weather all around us.

I hated doing it, but I told Antonio to put my parka on, (Which would probably
never be the same after that) and since there was absolutely no hope of him
fitting into my pants, (Damn those tight pants anyway) I had him wrap as much
spare clothing as we had around his legs. The only problem we had was that we
were both still freezing.

We talked for what seemed like days. I found out that Andy (yes he preferred that
to Antonio) was a musician, and that his dad didn't like that one bit. I found
out that he thought of himself as a square peg being forced into a round hole.
(His words, not mine) And that he wanted nothing more than his father's approval
for what he was, not for what his father wanted him to be.

I could identify with that. Not that my folks harassed me or anything. They had
my older sister Amy for that. I was the angelic fair-haired child compared to
her. (Amy did things like sending naked pictures of herself out on the Internet,
and then getting caught when a friend of the family told dad about it.) The point
is, Andy and I were connecting, I was starting to think there was a brain behind
those handsome "blank" eyes of his.

But inevitably, being a teenage boy, Andy brought the subject around to sex. We
were talking about the Internet and where the company's future was heading when
little Andy said. "You know I probably have the worlds largest collection of
pornography on my computer." I raised an eyebrow and asked, "What kind of
pornography are we talking about little man?"

"Nude pictures and dirty sex stories." He looked me straight in the eyes waiting
for me to be shocked and horrified. I just smiled my most innocent smile and
asked him, "Do you have any with you on your laptop?" I think he was shocked that
a female would ask him a question like that, instead of being indignant.

"Uh, yah I do, you what to see some?" He asked, a little worried now.

I asked him how many pictures and how many stories he had in his collection. He
proudly told me that he had hundreds. He had peaked my curiosity -- it's not
everyday you meet a fellow erotic items collector in real life.

Andy pulled his laptop out and turned it on. He began coyly to bring up picture
after picture. I was surprised at the screen quality. (My laptop has a liquid
crystal screen and pictures don't look that great on it.) I could quickly tell
that little Andy was a "doggy-style" man. It seemed that just about all his
pictures where of couples having sex doggy-style. (It still amazes me that some
people can get so caught up in one thing to the exclusion of all the other good
stuff in the world.)

After seeing some of his collection of pictures I could tell that he was becoming
aroused. (This I didn't need.) But at the same time his computer was sitting in
my lap, and it was nice and warm. I was in heaven, I couldn't believe he didn't
know that I was getting all this great heat. If I told him I didn't want to see
anymore of his pictures he would probably turn the computer off. I definitely
didn't want him to do that. So we continued to look at his adolescent
dream-scapes for another hour until his computer started to beep a low battery
warning. Disappointed but somewhat warmed I watched him turn it off and stow it
in his carry-on.