The best part about living in LA is that I live 5 blocks from the beach and less than 2 hours from the snow. Before this past winter, I hadn't been to the snow in over 6 years. So when it actually rained here this winter, Derek and I decided to take the drive East. Too bad we didn't pay attention to the Severe Weather Alert issued that day.
We woke up early and drove to Bear Mountain. They don't let you up there without chains, so we made sure and bought some before our trip. We weren't as prepared as we thought. Once we made it half way up the mountain the police made us stop and put the chains on. Some guy convinced us to pay him $40 to put the chains on 'real tight'. Oh, did I mention it was raining ridiculously hard? Well, it was. And it didn't stop. Instead, it turned from a downpour to a semi-frozen hail sleet material. It was cold and the little bits of frozen rain stung me in the face.
We went and got some lunch at a small old restaurant on a random road in the village. The food was warm and we saw that English actor who is the lead role in the HBO show The Tudors.
When we couldn't stand the wet cold any longer we decided to drive home. Oh, did I mention it was still raining? It kept raining when we stopped to take off the tire chains. Remember that guy who was nice enough to charge us to help us put on our tire chains? He put them on so tight we couldn't get them off. It was wet and cold and getting dark. We had no choice but to drive further down the mountain. Except when you drive with chains you can't drive more than 30mph, so I kept having to stop and let the other cars pass me. Finally, we made it down to where we had to put them on in the first place. We saw two really big monster trucks and decided to pull over and ask for help. Standing next to their trucks, were 6 or 7 huge Mexican men with giant pot bellies and handlebar mustaches. Derek and I walked up to them and had to admit how lame we were that we couldn't get the chains off our tires. Derek asked them if they had a tool we could borrow to try to pry them off. One of the men reached out and said 'Will this work?'. He was holding a 3' crowbar. It took 8 of us and a crowbar to get those stupid chains off the tires.
The jolly men laughed at us, jumped in their monster trucks, and bulldozed down the mountain.
Next time, I'll invest in a crowbar. And I'm definitely staying away from Severe Weather Alerts and nice men who offer to put on your tire chains.
