Story Time

This is such a belated entry, but I've been busy (being sick, mostly) so it'll have to do.

Last Saturday was filled with moments that will be hard to describe to their full effect in words. Proper effect? I just don't think I can clearly articulate everything.

Basically, the day was supposed to be one filled with snowboarding (and skiing for John and Ky). It ended up being a day filled with unexpected events surrounding two hours of snowboarding (yes, only two hours). First off, I drove. I didn't mind driving. I did mind the pouring rain I was driving in. I don't usually mind rain. I do mind rain that doesn't let up, flooding the freeways. Still drivable, it just takes a lot more concentration. In any case, the drive up was challenging but fine. We made good time, despite the rain. We had a late start (in part because we were all running late, in part because we needed to grab chains for the snow) but it was OK. If all went well, we'd have at a minimum four hours of snowboarding (in case the resort didn't open up for night skiing/snowboarding because of the weather), and since none of us were snow sport enthusiests, we were fairly OK with that.

Once on the mountain, I was getting nervous about driving in snow. I spent a lot of time focusing on remaining calm, and I think I did a pretty good job because nobody really noticed to what extent I was exerting myself to concentrate and focus. I was also a little nervous as to how I'd do in the high altitude (I'm not a fan of heights), but because we were driving in clouds and I couldn't see how high up we were, this part actually worked out alright. There was quite a bit of traffic. Mostly good traffic, as nobody wanted to tailgate or rush because of the weather. There came a point in which we needed to put chains on. In the hail. That was fun (and by fun, I mean blisteringly cold, pinching, and wet). But the chains went on, and off we went. Nervously. We rechecked the chains two or three times. They seemed fine. At the checkpoint, they remained fine. So chains it was.

A side note about chains - I don't like driving with them. It changes the feel of my car. I know my car very well, I've been driving it for quite a while. I'm very intune to it's responses in varying conditions. Even in new conditions, my judgment is quite good. Chains, however, changed the feel of my car and thus changed the responses and thus made me nervous. But it was OK. On the way up, we made it to Snow Valley (the lowest of the three Big Bear resorts) without mishap. Just a lot of traffic.

So much traffic, in fact, that it ended up taking a total of roughly three and a half hours to get there, even though we made good time on the way to the mountain. Kind of lame, but whatever. The other lame part was the fact that Snow Valley indeed was closing it's lifts at four because of the weather. Ultra lame. That left us two hours to actually board. But we had a really good coupon, so the price was actually not that bad and seeing as we just fought through awful weather for however many hours to get there, we decided to just go up.

The snowboarding itself was fun, although I suck. And by I suck, I mean I suck in general (I've only gone once and have never taken a real lesson), and I suck more in soft snow. I kept getting caught in it. Thankfully Sharon hasn't gone much either, and it's been years since her last trip. So we got caught in the soft snow together, often. At one point we went down a blue square and reached a patch of snow that first stopped us, and then prevented us from moving properly on our boards. We literally spent 15 some minutes (exaggeration? I don't know) crawling out of it. Yeah... haha.

The other thing is, Snow Valley's green circle runs are pretty terrible. They all have lulls in the middle that basically bring you to a stop, especially in the soft snow. EVERYBODY was stopping. Maybe experienced people wouldn't, but hey what experienced person would ride a green circle unless they had to? And seeing as they really didn't, all us less experienced people were getting stuck. Next time I'm going back to Snow Summit, me thinks.

Anyway, our two hours were fun. And then it was time to go. Except my car was super snowed in. And I was no help to anybody since I stupidly wore flip flops (I know, stupid. I was in a hurry >.<) so I was regaled to sitting in the car while everyone else tried to dig the car out. In the end, four Snow Valley people kindly helped us with a flurry of shovels and off we went.

Into treachery.

Dun dun dun.

Actually, the drive down wasn't that bad. I was going slowly, but I guess I wasn't in a low enough gear. (Oops). Even still, the drive started fine and I was feeling better about the chains until suddenly the traffic in front of me started slowing. And then there was a turn. And going at about 17 miles per hour (the current speed of traffic), my car started sliding out to the left into the opposite lane. In which I saw headlights of a car coming towards us, so I held on and turned my wheel to try to right us back into the lane... which ultimately completed our spin and spun us 180 degrees into a small turn out. We were now facing the wrong direction, but at least we were out of the way of traffic.

We were really lucky.

During the whole event of losing control of my car, I wasn't actually scared. I was commended on staying calm. I'm actually not surprised that I DID stay calm. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I'm just really glad that not only were there no cars immediately in the oncoming lane, the car(s) behind us slowed where they didn't plow into us during our spin, and there happened (for this I might be MOST thankful for) to be a small turnout in exactly the right spot with enough soft snow to stop us completely without bumping into anything. That is correct: we hit nothing.

So then we checked the chains, in case we lost one during the spin. Turns out, the chain on the left front tire wasn't there. Since I was (yes, stupidly) in my flip flops, I was again regaled to the car as the three guys searched for the missing chain. They couldn't find it. If they had found it, I would've just driven down the mountain. With just one chain, however, I didn't want to. So I called AAA. After thanking me for being a member for 39 years (thanks Dad!), they said they'd send a tow truck to tow us down the mountain. While on the phone with AAA, a large white passenger van (ultimately that of a Korean church?) lost control at almost the exact same spot we did. THAT was scary. The AAA person on the phone had just asked me if I thought we needed highway patrol, and I was just in the midst of telling her that we probably didn't until I saw a large white van sliding towards us, and then ultimately spinning 180 degrees and hitting the mountain on the OTHER side of the road. I quickly changed my mind and told her that there were now two vehicles that had lost control and that highway patrol would be needed.

While waiting for highway patrol/our tow truck, a shiny new Land Rover managed to lose control just before the spot where we did and they drove straight up into the mountain, head on. Seeing as there were no other cars around at the moment, they were blocking traffic, and ultimately the car seemed to be in running condition without much damage, they made the choice to just continue down the mountain. After about five minutes of driving forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, they made it back onto the road and continued (slowly) on their way.

The Korean van was still there, though. They were stuck in a ditch while we only had one chain. It was nice not being by ourselves.

Highway patrol finally arrived. I did feel safer with highway patrol there, even though I'm not sure if I liked the highway patrol guy himself. I appreciated the fact that the highway patrol car was situated in front of us with it's lights flashing so approaching traffic knew something was up. Even still, we watched two cars have a minor crash in front of us because they were (probably) rubbernecking. In fact, the strip remained pretty treacherous until multiple, huge snow plows came through.

And then it was just waiting. Don's towing company eventually arrived... and we were told that they were going to pull the Korean's out of the ditch before taking us down the mountain. We watched the whole process, excitedly taking pictures. Except after varying attempts to get them out, the Koreans were ultimately put back into the ditch. Don came over and told us that apparently there was a short in his truck and he couldn't use it. Didn't look like a short to me. It just looked like he wasn't getting any traction in the snow because of how he was situating the Korean's van onto his truck, regardless of the fact that he had chains. But whatever.

At this point it had been quite a while. We had already waited an hour for the tow truck to begin with, and then suddenly the tow truck was driving away. The highway patrol guy that I'm not sure if I liked or not came back over and asked if we were able to drive down the mountain. I said we only had one chain. He said that since it had stopped snowing and the snow plows had cleared the road, we would be OK if we drove slowly.

And so it began. The (now two) highway patrol cars blocked traffic and verbally encouraged me for a good 5-10 minutes as I tried to get back on the road. And once we were back on, we were headed (slowly) back down the mountain. By the time we stopped at Jack in the Box to get something to eat, the whole event seemed a bit unreal and as I finish typing up the story now it really doesn't seem like it happened.

I have no evidence of it either, seeing as my car doesn't have so much as a scratch of proof. That's a good thing, though.



Anyway, because I'm sick and so behind with life/everything, I'll write about everything else that's been going on later, probably.