Moving On

I was born and raised in the Sacramento area, and I am still here today, but for most of my adult life my emotional home has been in Incline Village, Nevada. Home is where the heart is. And right now my heart is aching just a little.

I could make a case for Incline Village being the greatest place on earth for a cyclist to have a home base. Obviously that's a bold statement, but greatness is personal and subjective. For me, the combination of riding opportunities, scenery and vibe is second to none.

View from the Rim Trail: Marlette Lake foreground, Lake Tahoe background.

My introduction to the area was the Great Flume Race in 1985. It was my first race at elevation and it killed me, but the riding was incredible. The Flume Trail was unlike anything I had experienced to that point. It sparked something inside me.

Anyone have some oxygen?

Shortly after that race—in a completely unrelated move—my dad, uncle and four friends chipped in and bought a condo together in nearby Incline Village. I now had an opportunity to explore the area. And it was so, so good. I vowed that one day I would own my own place in Incline.

For years it would be our home base for rides and Tahoe-area races. Good times.

I have so many blurry selfies from film camera days . . .

When Jennifer and I met we began going up there together.

The year 2000 or so on the first of many bikes I would build for her.

Happy guy.

Fast forward to 2011. The country was in the middle of a mortgage crisis, and we saw the opportunity to achieve my dream. We made an offer on a foreclosure property in Incline and got it. You can read about that here if you care. It's not lost on me how lucky we are. The situation was terrible for so many families who lost their homes, and that crisis is the only reason we could pull this off.

At first the condo ownership was great. We spent a lot of time up there, and I was living my dream. Paying a second mortgage was tough at times, but we offset it a little bit by renting it out to friends and acquaintances.

A couple years later in 2013, a couple things changed. One, we were finding it difficult to find time to go to Tahoe due to all the sports.

Basketball, February 2013.

Baseball, June 2013

Cross Country, September 2013

Baseball, October 2013

I have zero regrets about the sports. Our baseball journey with my son is one of the highlights of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The other change that happened that year was our HOA outlawing vacation rentals. This killed our meager revenue stream. In October 2013, unable to use it much and with no ability to make part-time income, we decided to rent the condo full-time. It has been rented out full-time ever since, but that era comes to a close in a few weeks.

A few years ago, our original plan was to start using the condo for ourselves again, with a target date right around now. I can't begin to express how excited I was for this to happen. Then the fires came.

The Caldor Fire came perilously close to Lake Tahoe, and it was only a shift in winds that saved South Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe faced a new reality. Up to that point no fire had crossed the peak of the Sierras. The relative safety we thought the bowl of Lake Tahoe provided had been shattered.

More fires came in the years since. They were larger. They burned hotter. They burned faster. We were mostly powerless to stop them. Many people still do not believe in climate change. But you know who does? Insurance actuaries.

Three years later the Tahoe Basin is suffering from an insurance crisis. Premiums are skyrocketing and for condo owners, HOA fees are doing the same. My insurance went up 43% and my HOA only 37% because I was one of the lucky ones. My HOA is now $604 a month, but other area HOAs are well over $900.

This situation is eerily similar to the one we fled in Shingle Springs. By moving to Folsom we saved about $6000 a year for homeowners insurance, and that was a couple years ago. We have friends and neighbors who are now paying in excess of $10k per year and will have difficulty selling their properties if something doesn't change.

For these reasons we feel like it would be best to get out of the Tahoe market while we can. Our tenants vacate at the end of the month, and on March 1 we will start the renovation process with the goal of getting the condo on the market as quickly as possible.

It's a painful decision, but the right one. Our hope is to find another place with the same kind of magic Incline Village provided for so many years.

Later.