By Rick Velotta, Las Vegas Sun

Listening to Mya Lake Reyes, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s director of diversity marketing and an expert on the LGBT travel market, talk about her compelling visual in her presentation about how to attract more gay and lesbian customers to a destination.

In the slide is a picture of six $100 bills.

“This is what’s important to you,” Reyes told her audience. “When you look at these hundreds, you don’t know whether they came from a black man, an Asian woman or a gay traveler. The important thing to you is that you get it. It all spends the same way, no matter who gave it to you.”

With travelers being far more protective of their hard-earned cash these days, making money has become a bigger challenge for the tourism industry. While things have been tough in Las Vegas, imagine how much harder it is in places like Gabbs, Pioche and Austin where they don’t have iconic magnets like the fountains at Bellagio and Celine Dion down the block.

That’s one of the reasons I was fascinated that Reyes’ presentation, “Straight Talk on the Gay Market,” was scheduled at the Nevada Commission on Tourism’s recent Rural Roundup in Mesquite.

How would marketing to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders play in rural Nevada? Wouldn’t it be like in Star Trek when matter and antimatter come into contact with each other and the universe explodes?

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Lake Tahoe Community College library is hosting weekly job and resume clinics on Wednesday from 1-3pm for free.

Role playing questions is available, talking options, as well as personality assessments.

For more information, call (530) 541.4660, ext. 232. The college is at 1 College Drive, South Lake Tahoe.

The Tahoe City Parks and Recreation Department “Bike Derby” is going into its 4th year at the Rideout Community Center May 14 from 11am-2pm.

The Tahoe City Recreation Department along with the other hosting associations have an afternoon planned full of food, games, bike safety and repair stations, obstacle course, and even the “Tour de Rideout.”

This free event is the day before professional cyclists ride around Lake Tahoe.

For more information on this event or if you are interested in volunteering, contact Shaun at (530) 583.3440, ext.14.

The address for the Rideout Community Center is 740 Timberland Lane, Tahoe City.

El Dorado County redistricting meeting in South Lake Tahoe is May 19 from 6-8pm at Lake Tahoe Airport.

By Kathryn Reed

JC Penney is coming to South Lake Tahoe – sort of.

The national retailer is launching JCP Express – an answer to dying catalog sales and demand for online purchases.

“A national transformation for JC Penney is going on. We will be like a department store for them minus the inventory,” explained Dave Newell, owner of Blue Lake Flooring and Paint in South Lake Tahoe.

The service will be available this summer. Newell learned last week his store on James Avenue will be the headquarters for the Lake Tahoe Basin version of the program.

Gone is the catalog service like what Ace Hardware used to do.

People will be able to order any JC Penney merchandise from Newell’s store or online from home/work, then have it shipped to his store. This saves people the expense of shipping it to their house.

Newell foresees this program as a boon for second homeowners who buy something at the retailer but don’t want to haul it to Lake Tahoe. For locals it means free shipping.

Payments will be able to be made at the South Tahoe outlet and returns will also be handled there.

By Kathryn Reed

Heading into fall, the Corral Trail may be an entirely different experience for mountain bikers and motorized vehicles.

This is because the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit spent $24,000 from its trail budget to bring in Hilride Progression Development Group to design the trail that could lead to a more sophisticated mountain bike system throughout the basin. Construction is slated to begin in late summer. Between now and then a series of design workshops will be conducted.

Improvements to the South Shore's Corral Trail are likely to begin this summer.

At a meeting Thursday night of more than 24 fat tire die-hards, it sounded like a foreign language was being spoken – though it was a bit like how riders talk about terrain parks at ski resorts.

Right now three jumps are on the trail that is accessed off Pioneer Trail at Oneidas Road. Those who spoke out April 28 want more jumps, some want bigger features, all said it needs to flow better.

Len Holmgren cautioned that the route needs to match the ability of the riders – who aren’t all gnarly riders like many of whom attended the meeting put on by the U.S. Forest Service.

Garrett Villanueva, assistant forest engineer with the Forest Service, agreed after the meeting that the array of users on this particular trail were not at the meeting – particularly the mainstream mountain biker, motorcyclists and quad ATV.

“Without input, they won’t have the options they desire,” Villanueva warned.

The next meeting is June 11 at the Forest Service office in South Lake Tahoe. The morning will start at 9 going over a map Hilride officials will have devised that will contain potential locations for various features. The rest of the day, which will end about 4pm, will be scoping out the actual trail.

“This will be built by volunteers. It’s the only way it will be put in the ground,” Villanueva told Lake Tahoe News.

Several at the meeting are members of Tahoe Area Mountain Biking Association, which has pledged its support to help build the trail.

Mountain biking is big business. People travel all over the world to ride specific trails. In Whistler, 10 percent of the residents belong to the cycling club there, according to a Hilride official.

Matt Lopes of Hilride showed endless video of trails – mostly in the Western United States. Most people at the meeting have traveled to these and other locations to ride their mountain bikes.

Rose Daiek is one of those traveling riders. But she also likes the idea of improving her back yard. And she recognizes needing something for all levels.

“Progression is how people get better,” Daiek said.

For more information about the Corral Trail project, contact Villanueva or Jacob Quinn at the LTBMU office at (530) 543.2600.

On May 4, Bona Fide Books of Meyers will launch its first publication, “Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Volume 1: The West,” with a reading at Lake Tahoe Community College.

The 7pm event in the Aspen Room at the South Lake Tahoe college will feature local essayists Joseph Flannery and Janet Smith, whose work appears in the collection. Tahoe City’s Flannery wrote of his encounters with grizzly bears while working in Yellowstone, while South Lake Tahoe’s Smith detailed leaving home after high school for life in Yosemite Valley.

“The stories in this collection are incredible,” Kim Wyatt, owner and publisher of Bona Fide Books, said in a press release. “We received over 200 submissions, and it was tough to keep it to 20. Something about living in nature makes great storytellers, and these writers should be widely read.”

“Permanent Vacation” is available at Bona Fide Books, Amazon and some bookstores. Starting May 4 it will also be available online at www.pvstories.net, where park workers can share their stories. Readers can also go there to find out more about their favorite “Permanent Vacation” contributors, who will be updating the site this summer with video and photos of hikes, climbs, and river trips.

Bona Fide’s next two books will come out later this year. “Mud Cakes,” the winner of the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, will be released in October, and “Tahoe Blues,” a collection of flash fiction and micro essays about life at the lake, will debut before Christmas.

The reading is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Kim Wyatt at editor@bonafidebooks.com or go online.

By Rick Daysog, Sacramento Bee

In its annual “State of the Air” report released this month, the American Lung Association ranks Sacramento as the fifth-worst metropolitan area in the country for ozone pollution during the 2007-09 period. The area is tied for 11th worst for short-term particle pollution during the same three-year span.

Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director of the American Lung Association in California, noted the local region is improving due to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and wood burned in fireplaces.

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By Reno Gazette-Journal

FERNLEY — The Fernley-Fallon-Silver Springs Coast Guard Auxiliary is reminding boaters to never go boating without a life jacket.

Additionally, passengers inside the boat are encouraged to wear life jackets.

Rick Thomas, flotilla commander, says that “wearing a life jacket on a boat is akin to wearing a seat belt in a car. Just as you shouldn’t start your journey in your car without buckling up, you shouldn’t start your journey on a boat without buckling up your life jacket.”

Additionally, the Auxiliary says nearly 75 percent of the 736 people who died by drowning were not wearing their life jacket.

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Publisher’s note: State Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, released the following statement regarding Nevada Senate Bill 271 that would remove Nevada from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Compact.

To the community,

Protecting our environment and the health of Lake Tahoe is of critical importance. However, this bi-state effort has failed in its directed purpose, often leaving Tahoe basin residents and businesses to suffer from stymied growth, crippling regulation and protracted litigation.

Ted Gaines

This gridlock has brought Tahoe’s private business sector to a grinding halt. We need to put local residents before out-of-town attorneys. I commend the Nevada Legislature for recognizing the dysfunction, stepping up to the plate and taking action.

Lake Tahoe is not only an environmental beauty, but a critical part of California’s economy. By ensuring the lake’s future health along with recognizing the area’s economic realities, we can assure our future generations that they will be able to continue to enjoy one of California’s national treasures.

Ted Gaines