This Column Continues to Go Downhill

Our regularly scheduled column has been rudely preempted by Ski Week, yet again.

Yes, that’s right, I said Ski Week. Instead of celebrating the glorious birthdays of Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison on two separate Mondays in February, like we all did when we were young, our school district changed things up a few years ago.

They tacked on three extra president’s days (both of the Adamses and James Buchanan, strictly because of his kick-ass hair) to the previous two, and lined them all up in a row this week. This phenomenon is nicknamed “Ski Week,” so the idea, apparently, is that we’re all supposed to head up to the slopes and spend the education-free week on a ski vacation.

I have always had trouble writing this column on ski week. In the past, I have railed against the policy of keeping all three of our boys home for nine days in a row, because we never went on a week-long ski vacation, and therefore I was trapped in the house refereeing the World Brothers Wrestling Federation and getting nothing else done.

Now that the boys are older, I’m having trouble writing this column in the middle of February for a different reason. We are finally able to embrace the concept of ski week, or in our case, snowboard week, so now I’m still getting nothing done, but it’s a lot more satisfying!

This happened to be a special ski week for two reasons. The first being that we didn’t get to go snowboarding at all on Ski Week 2023, because it was snowing so hard all week the roads were closed. Too much of a good thing, I guess. The second reason this week is special is because it saw the return of Son Number Three to the slopes.

The rest of us have been going up the hill whenever we could since December, but Number Three wasn’t able to join us due to his collarbone. The collarbone he snapped in half while snowboarding on the very first day we went this season. On the second run of the first day, Son Number Three decided that was the right time to air out the big jumps.

His version of the story involved massive air and an eight-foot ditch he had to clear (reports are fuzzy on whether it was eight feet deep, eight feet wide, or both). It apparently all would have been fine except for another little bumpy dip at the landing zone. The board nosed in and he landed superman-style onto the unforgiving snow (if Superman flew with his arms back at his sides and rammed things with his collarbone).

He is currently leading his brothers in the broken bones department by a score of 2-0-0. He loves to beat them at things, but I’m not sure he’s so happy about it in this case.

He broke it on December 17, and February 17 was his all-clear date to get back to contact sports. That means he can finally suit up for lacrosse again, but more importantly, he can also strap his snowboard back on his feet!

So, you can see why I’m having trouble getting anything done this week. I mean, when you get cleared for active duty on the Saturday before ski week, you really have no choice. You must get up the hill and make up for lost time. And you must do it for multiple days when the fresh snow just keeps falling every night, begging you to come see how sturdy the new collarbone is.

I’m happy to report his triumphant return to the mountains has been a success, and both collarbones remain intact.

For now.

I mean, you just never know. These boys go pretty hard.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Difference in College, Part II

As I found out recently when Son Number One went off to his freshman year of college, the university experience has changed a tad in the last thirty years. He’s got co-ed dorms, real restaurant chains on campus that accept his meal plan card, a new iPad included with tuition, and food trucks at the football games. It’s insane.

I was already jealous enough, but then he joined the Winter Sports Club. Do you know who didn’t have access to a Winter Sports Club in college? Me, that’s who! Now granted, he’s going to college at the base of the Sierra Nevadas and I went to college at the beach in central California, but still, it’s obviously unfair.

His two younger brothers and I upgraded our season passes this year, since our budget opened up a bit when our fourth snowboarder went off to college. We were feeling pretty smug, thinking we’d be ripping it up at the fabulous Sugar Bowl while he was relegated to the slightly lesser Mt. Rose in Nevada.

But then he went and joined the Winter Sports Club, and do you know what they did? They figured out how to wrangle a discounted price on the IKON pass. The IKON pass, people!

For those of you non-winter sports club kinda folks, the IKON pass is one of a few relatively newish passes that gives you access to a bunch of different ski resorts instead of just one.

The IKON pass gives you unlimited access to fourteen different resorts across the U.S. and Canada, and up to five days access to a bunch more. Even a handful of way-more-international-than-Canada resorts.

So, while his brothers and I will be forced to go to one place all winter, he will have unlimited access to: (Sorry in advance about the all caps. I copied the list off the IKON website and I’m far too lazy to re-type it all.)

WINTER PARK, CO

COPPER MOUNTAIN RESORT, CO

ELDORA MOUNTAIN RESORT, CO

PALISADES TAHOE, CA

MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, CA

JUNE MOUNTAIN, CA

BIG BEAR MOUNTAIN RESORT, CA

SNOW VALLEY, CA

STRATTON, VT

SUGARBUSH RESORT, VT

SNOWSHOE, WV

TREMBLANT, QC

BLUE MOUNTAIN, ON

SOLITUDE MOUNTAIN RESORT, UT

Now, I doubt he’s going to make a road trip to Sugarbush or Tremblant, but the Colorado Rockies aren’t 100% out of the question for some motivated college kids who are willing to skip a lot of classes.

But all that is irrelevant when you read the one on the list that really matters – Palisades Tahoe. They changed the name to Palisades a while back, but you might know it better by its old name - Squaw Valley. He gets to go to Squaw Valley. Squaw! He’s only about 45 minutes away. They held the Olympic Games there, for goodness sake.

And do you know what really frosts my fanny about this whole thing? The price he paid. The IKON pass is expensive, and for good reason. But they have a young adult discount if you’re under twenty-three. Then on top of that they have a college student discount. And then on top of that, the Winter Sports Club somehow managed to get a major discount on top of those as well.

His IKON pass was less than I paid for his fifteen-year-old brother’s pass at Sugar Bowl!

College is ridiculous!

To make matters even more frosting for me, the pass also entitles him to up to five days at these world-class resorts:

STEAMBOAT, CO

ARAPAHOE BASIN, CO

BIG SKY RESORT, MT

 KILLINGTON-PICO, VT 

WINDHAM MOUNTAIN, NY 

THE HIGHLANDS, MI

BOYNE MOUNTAIN, MI

NEWALYESKA RESORT, AK

CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN, WA

THE SUMMIT AT SNOQUALMIE, WA 

MT. BACHELOR, OR

SCHWEITZER, ID

SKIBIG3, AB 

REVELSTOKE MOUNTAIN RESORT, BC

CYPRESS MOUNTAIN, BC

RED MOUNTAIN, BC

PANORAMA, BC

SUN PEAKS RESORT, BC

SUNDAY RIVER, ME

SUGARLOAF, ME

LOON MOUNTAIN, NH 

BRIGHTON, UT 

SNOWBIRD, UT 

NEWCAMELBACK RESORT, PA

NEWBLUE MOUNTAIN RESORT, PA

CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC VALLEY, FRANCE

DOLOMITI SUPERSKI, ITALY

GRANDVALIRA RESORTS, ANDORRA

KITZBÜHEL, AUSTRIA

ZERMATT MATTERHORN, SWITZERLAND

THREDBO, AUSTRALIA

MT BULLER, AUSTRALIA

CORONET PEAK, THE REMARKABLES & MT HUTT, NEW ZEALAND

NISEKO UNITED, JAPAN

LOTTE ARAI RESORT, JAPAN

VALLE NEVADO, CHILE

I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but how fun does Dolomiti Superski in Italy sound? Am I right? And I don't even know where Andorra is, but I know I want to shred the Grandvalira! If I was him, I’d take my second semester of college off and hitchhike with my snowboard. Just sayin’.

His mom might be a little upset, but I’d high five him. Privately, away from his mother, of course.

But here’s the part about all of this that really, REALLY frosts me: When I called the people at IKON, no one there had heard of our new UNR Winter Sports Club’s Parents Club, and they flatly refused to honor our 85% discount.

The nerve.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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We Interrupt This Column...

We interrupt this column for some very important medicinal appointments. You see, the boys and I ran the annual Run Rocklin 5K on Sunday, and even though they’ve been running it for years with me, and they are getting older and stronger, they all sucked this year. Well, actually Son Number Three did OK-ish, but the other two sucked. I also sucked. It was basically a suck-fest.

This has me very concerned about the health of our legs and lungs. Rocklin is only a few hundred feet above sea level, so there should have been no shortage of oxygen for us to use, but I for one couldn’t find nearly as much as I needed. The boys seemed to be having the same issue as me, albeit in a quieter and less obvious way. But their finishing times told the tale – Not enough oxygen and weak legs.

It was obviously time to take us all for a series of tests.

This leads us to the reason we are interrupting today’s column. Son Number Two happens to turn seventeen years old today, and he doesn’t have any tests scheduled at school. His two brothers don’t have any scheduled classroom tests either.

All this great lack of school test timing happened to coincide perfectly with the fact that it snowed about eight to ten inches in the Sierras yesterday, so we have the perfect storm, so to speak. Which brings us to the reason we have to interrupt this column today – namely, I’m not here.

I mean, we really had no choice but to get all three boys and me up to a high-altitude testing ground, where we’re able to run our legs through a long series of rigorous tests in a low-oxygen environment. And since it’s a low-temperature day, we’re also able to visually monitor our lung functions.

Look, I don’t like them missing school any more than they do for these kinds of medicinal appointments, but gosh darn it, the health of our children will always come first.

Do I care too much? Perhaps. But we will stay up here and run these tests until our legs can’t stand it anymore.

We’ll get to the bottom of things. And we’ll probably get there pretty fast.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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How Not to Internet

So, apparently, I follow the Reno division of the National Weather Service on Twitter. Or they follow me. I’m not really sure. All I know is that I get alerts about their posts now, which I don’t mind this winter, because I’m interested in how many more damned feet of snow are going to fall in the Sierras before we can finally go back up to snowboard. The current answer is, “A lot more.”

I swear, if anyone even so much as whispers the word “drought” this summer, I’m going to lose it. But I digress…

The other day, the NWS Reno feed (Check out all the exciting weather action on Twitter @NWSReno) had a tweet about the “atmospheric river” headed our way tomorrow. We’ve been hearing that term a lot lately around here in the news. It’s an exciting and fancy weather term, so no one in the weather reporting business misses an opportunity to throw it out there.

While “atmospheric river” is getting the feel of being overplayed, one follower of the NWS Reno feed put on a clinic on how not to respond in these types of term overuse situations.

Howard Smith replied: Talking about an atmospheric river is kinda like the Sahara desert ( desert desert). If you remember your fluid dynamics the entire atmosphere acts as a river!!!!

This is a fabulous example of how not to internet. What Howard is really saying here, to the tens of people who also follow NWS Reno, is this – “Hello, my name is Howard, and I don’t have many people in my life who validate me. I think I am very smart, and I want you to think I’m smart also, even if my boss never tells me I’m smart, even though I’m way smarter than him and should have his job, and I would have his job if it wasn’t for all the bs office politics and Brenda in HR who definitely has it out for me ever since I pointed out that she shouldn’t feed her cat so much because it looks really fat in all the pictures on her desk, and that maybe she should think about cutting back on the treats herself while she’s at it.”

Howard is obviously interneting wrong. I read Howard’s tweet and just shook my head. That’s an example of interneting correctly.

If I was interneting like Howard, I would have responded: “Gosh, Howard, for such an obviously intelligent guy such as yourself, your grammar is as bad as your need to feel smart! I’ll let the “kinda” slide since tweets are informal, but if you remember your third-grade punctuation lessons, informality doesn’t excuse the glaringly obvious missing comma after “dynamics.” Also, what’s with the space between your opening round bracket (you probably call it a parenthesis, but that’s actually the term for the word or phrase inside the brackets) for your parenthetical phrase and the first word of said parenthetical phrase? That’s not supposed to be there, brainiac. And four exclamation points? Bro. And bagging on saying, “Sahara desert?” Really? The Arabic word for desert is “sahra,” and “sahara” is its pluralization. So, if you’re going to be all cutesy and pretend that we should all be using Arabic words in our everyday English communications, you really should have said “Sahara Deserts.” That would have actually been grammatically correct. It still wouldn’t have made you seem smart to anyone, or morally superior in any way, but at least it wouldn’t have been so sadly, sadly wrong.”

You can see the obvious difference between the correct interneting reaction and this incorrect, desperate cry for help style.

NWS Reno took an intermediate approach with Captain Smart Guy. They didn’t internet poorly, necessarily, but they did respond, which I would have counseled against, had they asked.

They referred Howard to a helpful article from noaa.gov on what an atmospheric river actually is: a flowing column of condensed water vapor in the atmosphere responsible for significant levels of rain and snow, especially in the western United States.

Take that, Super Guy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which employs people that surely understand fluid dynamics slightly better than you (even though you should obviously be running NOAA, and probably would be if your boss and Brenda didn’t have it out for you), thinks that an atmospheric river is not only a real thing, but also grammatically correct. I’ll bet they even call it the Sahara Desert.

Internet better in the future, Howard.

Regarding NOAA’s definition, I’m not sure why the western United States gets to have all the atmospheric fun, but if you’ll excuse me, I need to contact them and ask if they can do anything to divert the river.

I want to go snowboarding!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Snowmageddon - Part II

Our February 23^rd major weather event in Rocklin, California was one for the record books! Frozen precipitation of some kind fell from the sky onto our town for minutes. (We have incredibly low standards for our record books.)

While the storm was no doubt unusual, it was also very confusing. You notice I didn’t say that snow fell from the sky, although, many people swear that’s what happened. Others aren’t so sure. They say the Inuit people have more than fifty terms for different kinds of snow. Rocklin is currently giving the Inuit a run for their money.

Almost immediately after the minutes of winter wildness, we began to hear the term “graupel” pop up in our various news feeds. Graupel is, of course, when a snowflake falls through a layer of air containing supercooled water droplets. This causes those water droplets to “rime,” or instantly freeze onto the snowflakes.

“What the hail are you talking about?” you might be asking. No, I’m not talking about hail. That particular phenomenon occurs when rain drops get carried upward by crazy-ass weather inside thunder clouds, to a higher, colder elevation, where they freeze and grow until they are too heavy for the updraft, then fall to the earth and destroy your car, if you live in Texas.

Graupel – which rimes with either “apple,” “topple,” “lapel,” or “Inuit.” No one is sure – is not solid ice and dangerous as hail. It’s crunchy and fun. If you are having trouble envisioning what graupel looks like, it might help to know that the name comes from the German word for pearl barley, so that should clear it up.

But, I’m not at all convinced that what we experienced wasn’t just regular old snow. When I ran outside to enjoy the frozen water of some variety falling from the sky, it was definitely mixed with rain. I was wearing a black long-sleeve shirt, so it was very easy to tell that half of what was falling on my arm was plain old rain, and the other half was frozen water.

I could not readily distinguish if the snowflakes had been rimed into graupel or not, but they did look a little weird. We were told in no uncertain terms, however, that it was not sleet. That’s because no one knows what sleet is. Not even the Inuit.

One thing was for sure. It wasn’t cold enough at ground level for any of it to stick. And it certainly didn’t get cold enough overnight for any of our atmospheric water droplets to rime into hoar frost, so that was also a win.

Since our exciting hoarless rimed graupel morning here in Rocklin, another slightly more significant weather event has developed. Winter storm Quest, already in a state near you, has since deposited somewhere in the neighborhood of seven feet of new snow in the Sierra Nevadas.

About an hour east of here, the main interstate highways have been closed down for the better part of three days now with near-constant blizzard conditions. If your online order is delayed, you no longer need to wonder what happened to it. Your Amazon package has been flash-frozen in a 55-foot trailer on the side of I-80 somewhere. Please be patient.

It has been wild up there. The power had been knocked out by the storm, but I finally got a call through to our favorite ski resort yesterday, because I was very curious. I asked them to go out in the blizzard for me and see if they were experiencing any graupel with the other types of snow.

They told me to go to hail.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Snowmageddon

Look, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we may have a catastrophic situation brewing here. My sleepy little town of Rocklin, California – elevation 249 feet above sea level – is about to get hit with a sizeable weather event.

We are currently bracing for a major winter storm. The grim forecast is calling for as many as fifteen, to possibly even twenty, minutes of snow, scheduled to slam into our unsuspecting hamlet tomorrow morning at 7:00 am.

Do you have any idea what that means? This has the potential for total chaos. We would be staring down the barrel of massive school closures, if we were in school right now. Ironically, the kids are currently off for “ski week.” They’ll probably be skiing down main street tomorrow morning.

Stores may or may not be selling out of Gatorade and AAA batteries as we speak. All I can tell you is the one I went to the other day had very questionable stocking levels.

Hundreds of families probably Googled “Tesla Solar Batteries” in just the last few hours, all of them coming to the same conclusion – they still don’t make financial sense.

But what does it matter? Our solar panels will soon be covered with God-only-knows how many individual flakes of snow, possibly even forming a layer. How in the hell are those things supposed to produce energy for us when they’re virtually frozen solid??

How will we get to work? How will we get our expensive drive-thru coffee? How will we even get out of our houses? Not a single one of us owns a snow shovel.

On the plus side, hundreds of family pets will see snow for the first time. Some children may even get to make snowmen in their front yards. They could be up to five or maybe even six inches in height. (The snowmen, not the children.)

By the way, is it still snowman? I mean, it’s 2023, so is it officially snowperson now? Or snowfigure? I’m really not sure, but I guess it might all depend on where you put the carrot?

Anyway… Amid the ensuing chaos, at least the kids and their pets will be having a good time. That is, if they can even make it from the front door to the lawn through the blowing drifts of sno… Oh, wait, hang on. Nope. The forecast has changed. Looks like it’s just going to be just rain now instead of snow.

Well, that’s a relief. Do you think I can return all this Gatorade and these AAA’s? Or maybe I should donate them to the folks up in the Sierras, about an hour east of here. They’re scheduled for three feet of snow and 70 mph winds.

Nah, they’ll be fine. They’re used to that sort of thing…

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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This Will Be Painful, I Insure You

Three months ago, some yahoo up in Oregon talked himself out of chaining up his two-wheel-drive Nissan sedan in a blizzard, then promptly slid across the highway in front of our Suburban. Unfortunately, both vehicles were moving at the time, and the end result was a pretty decent head-on collision, followed by four hours of standing on the side of the highway in a snowstorm.

Good times.

When our vehicles collided, all eight of the airbags in our Suburban deployed. ("Deploy" is a fun euphemism for "loudly explode into your face and fill car with smoke.") When that happened, the OnStar system immediately sprang into action and alerted insurance agents and adjusters in three states that it was time to do their jobs very poorly.

I like my insurance company. Or at least, I want my insurance company to keep liking me, so I’m not going to mention their name here. The other guy’s insurance company rhymes with Allstate.

The next morning, I spoke on the phone with the third-party insurance adjuster who would be collecting the scrap heap that was our car, and described the collision, the damage, and the fact that all the airbags had gone off. She told me that the car was definitely totaled, and we would never see it again. So, we fished all the loose change out of the ashtray and left the wreckage of our Suburban at Caveman Towing in Grants Pass, Oregon, heading home to California, where we would eagerly await our total loss settlement check.

A week later some idiot from some third-party adjuster company called me to say that my Suburban was at a salvage yard in Eugene, Oregon, and good news! – It looks like it’s repairable!

I realize you guys legalized weed up there, but I really don’t think that means that it’s OK to smoke dope while you’re on the job, dude. Say again? You want to repair it? Might I remind you that all eight air bags went off? The interior of the car looks like a one-star hotel room in Fallujah, and the front looks like it was hit with the same Stinger missile that dropped the hotel rating down from a three.

Well, we need to do a full estimate on it, but it looks promising. Do you have a favorite repair shop?

A favorite repair shop? In Eugene, Oregon? A town where I don’t live in a state where I don’t live? Hmm… Is Big Tony’s Creole Grill and Auto Body still in business? No? OK, then, I guess you can pick your favorite, Skippy.

A week later the good news came down from the north. The Suburban is repairable! The Oregon estimate came back at $12,000.

Uh… $12,000? Was that just the interior estimate, or did you make the common mistake of confusing my Suburban with that Maserati that had a scratch on the hood?

Can I see a copy of that estimate, please? Uh… You guys only have an hour and a half of “frame inspection and repair labor” listed on here. Did you miss the part about how it was a head-on collision that reduced a Nissan sedan to the size of a juice box? And what an adorable labor rate you used. Why don’t we tow it down here for a California estimate, where they aren’t planning to repair it at the preschool with clay and Legos.

Fast forward another week and the California repair shop calls to tell me that the Suburban arrived and has some rear bumper damage. Hmm… Nope. The rear bumper was the one part of the car not involved in the accident.

Yeah, the tow truck driver seemed to think that might be fork lift damage. The drive shaft is separated and laying on the ground, too.

Oh, goody. Was my car being scavenged for parts at the Oregon salvage yard before someone said, “Whoops. Hey, put that transmission back in, they want to tow it down to California instead.”? And, great news about the new bumper damage! I was beginning to worry that no one would get to pick my car up with a forklift during this process. I’m glad we checked that box off.

I was skeptical before, but if we’ve been sticking giant steel beams under my car and lifting it up like it was a pallet of Huggies at Costco, I really want it back now! Get going on that estimate!

Fast forward what seemed to be nine or ten years and the California shop calls with the good news. The estimate is up to $19,000 now, but it’s not a total loss, yet. It’s still repairable!

Wow, that is fantastic news, a full two months after the crash. How much “frame inspection and repair labor” do you have in there? Oh, an entire two hours this time. That should be plenty. Let’s get going on the repairs. We crashed on January 2^nd, and I’d like to have my car back for next New Year’s, if possible.

Fast forward another month, and almost exactly three months after Captain Slides-A-Lot ruined our travel plans, the California repair shop called back with the “bad” news.

Wow, so sorry to tell you this, but after getting your car up on the frame measuring machine, it turns out that the frame will need to be completely replaced. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to be a total loss.

Yeah, wow, what an unfortunate turn of events that I never could have seen coming. Gee, I’m so sad for your repair shop’s loss of revenue. Too bad we didn’t put it up on the frame measuring machine THREE MONTHS AGO!!

Like I said, I’m not going to mention their name here, but I would venture a guess that I have one of the best insurance companies a driver can have, and they still suck this bad. How on Earth is frame measuring machine not the first thing they demand from whatever third-party stoner organization is tasked with inspecting the vehicle? Do they just love spending my money? Don’t answer that.

And as far as the other guy’s insurance company goes – don’t even get me started. My wife was bruised pretty heavily by the seatbelt, and when we mentioned that, they immediately went into frantic mode while trying to use their caring and compassionate voices.

I almost believed they cared until I received the letter explaining how they would calculate an injury settlement, if there needed to be one. They explained that injuries and their associated monetary values are calculated with their handy insurance computer program named… wait for it… “Colossus.”  – I am not making that up.

Colossus? Are you nice folks so far removed from the realm of actual humanity that you can’t even hear how ridiculously ominous that sounds? Seriously? I have an idea. Let’s be real. Let’s all just cut the crap and rename it to sound even more truthful. That way you don’t have to go through the charade of using your caring voice.

I’m thinking the “We’re Going to Screw You Over-inator” has a better ring to it.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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Crash Boom Bang

Sing to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song. (For those of you under 40, Gilligan’s Island was a show about a bunch of people who could have easily gotten off an island if they had just killed and eaten Bob Denver. I assume you can YouTube the theme song.)

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

a tale of a fateful trip,

that started from a snowy town,

and ended in a ditch.

The driver was a mighty steering man,

his wife worried and unsure,

three passengers in the back,

for a six-hour tour.

A six-hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,

but the Suburban was going straight,

if not for the driver of the sliding Nissan,

we might have made it out of the state.

Made it out of the state.

The Suburban landed in a ditch,

on an uncharted stretch of road,

with Ron the tow guy,

Tow Truck Chuck, too,

the state trooper and his car.

Now the passengers,

the driver and his wife

are all at the Shilo Inn.

Yes, we started the New Year with a bang. Well, first an expletive, then a bang, then a ricochet, then a crunch, followed by eight more simultaneous bangs as all the airbags in our Suburban deployed. Good times.

I’ve always been comfortable driving in the snow. I was born and raised near the Sierras, one of the biggest, baddest mountain ranges known to man. I understand what chains and four-wheel-drive can and can’t do for me. I actually kind of like driving in the snow.

So when it started snowing heavily on our way from Grants Pass, Oregon to Crescent City, California on Monday afternoon, I didn’t sweat it. I just put the Suburban in 4WD, slowed down, increased my following distance, and powered through the curves. My wife was not as relaxed. She’s the smart one.

I think it was the first car that was upside down on the side of the road that made her worry. And when I say upside down, I mean literally sitting on its roof in the ditch.

How? Why? What the hell is the matter with you people?

Oh, well. Some people just can’t drive.

Hey, look. There’s a pickup truck UPSIDE DOWN in the ditch.

Hmm... two cars sitting on their roofs within a mile of each other.

Now, for some people, that might have been a warning. Not me, though. I just shrugged and said, “They were probably just going too fast.”

My only precautionary thought on the whole drive was, “I wish this was a divided highway. I know I’m not going to screw up, but what about the oncoming traffic.”

Dennis, who used to drive a black four-door Nissan sedan, was on his way home at the same time we were on our way to Crescent City. Unfortunately for us, Dennis was one of the cars in our oncoming traffic. And unfortunately for everyone involved, Dennis had successfully talked himself out of stopping to chain up, since he was only a few miles from home and had made it this far.

Then Dennis stopped making it any further and slid into our lane.

The lady in front of me in the Lexus SUV was able to avoid him by driving into the ditch. I tried the same maneuver, but didn’t have quite enough road or time to get it done. About a split second after I swore loudly under my breath, we hit the little Nissan almost head-on. The ‘almost’ was probably the key to how well things went after that.

I had started to dive off the road, so I hit him with the driver’s side headlight area of my Suburban, pretty much square in the middle of his front bumper. Thankfully, that sent us ricocheting into the ditch instead of continuing through his car. We went twenty feet down the bank and slammed into the snow, which deployed all eight airbags. It was loud.

(FYI, airbags smell like metallic gunpowder and make the inside of the car smoky, which my wife does not like in the least.)

Amazingly, the five of us, Dennis, and his passenger all walked away without so much as a scratch. Given the fact that we hit hard enough for airbags, and the entire front of Dennis’ car was missing, we all considered that nothing short of miraculous.

Now, if you’re going to crash into Dennis and then into a ditch in pretty much the middle of nowhere on US-199 in Oregon, I highly recommend mile post 19, because that’s where Dave lives. Dave was checking on us before we were all out of the car. Dave was directing traffic and setting out flares right away. Dave was on his cell phone calling the state patrol for us before the airbag smoke had settled. Dave even opened up his shop for us so my wife could sit somewhere warm. Dave rocks. Dave got beer money.

Another perk to mile post 19 is Cheryl’s Bar and Grill. Unfortunately, Cheryl wasn’t open at the time, but her bar and grill has a covered porch that is really handy in a heavy snow storm. It sure beat spending three hours standing in the forest.

When crashing near Grants Pass, I would also recommend Caveman Towing. Besides their really cool logo of a caveman dragging a car with a rope, Ron and Chuck are pros.

When getting a cheap room late at night in Grants Pass, I would also recommend the Shilo Inn. Sure, the hallways smelled like mildew, but the room didn’t, the bed was comfy, and the boys loved the make-your-own waffle machine at the complimentary continental breakfast buffet. Also, its proximity to Caveman Towing and Enterprise Rent-A-Car make it a convenient choice.

I tentatively recommend Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Grants Pass, only because of the wait. The service was excellent, but apparently everyone in Grants Pass rents cars when it snows. Who knew? The perfect Suburban in the parking lot was unfortunately reserved, but the Dodge Ram 1500 Big Horn four-door pickup with the 5.7-liter V8 HEMI and 8-speed automatic transmission was up for grabs. Mine!

When shopping for a tarp to cover a Suburban’s worth of soft-sided luggage, pillows, blankets, shopping bags full crap, etc. in the back of a Dodge Ram 1500 Big Horn HEMI in a snow storm, I highly recommend the Grants Pass Bi-Mart. The 10’ x 18’ medium-duty outdoor tarp is perfect for the job, and on sale right now for $9.97.

And finally, when the two coolers you thought would hold the tarp down on I-5 fail to do their job, I highly recommend the Ace Hardware in Rogue River, Oregon. They sell 40-pound bags of wood chips for $6.99 that perfectly match the woodchips under your play structure at home. Nothing does a better job of keeping your all-weather tarp snuggly protecting your luggage than two hundred and eighty pounds of mulch.

One thing I certainly won’t recommend... meeting Dennis the way we did. Stay safe out there, folks, and remember: If the little voice in the back of your head is saying “I don’t like this,” or your wife is sitting next to you saying the same thing, it pays to listen!

Adios, Suburban. We’ll miss you, but I guess it’s time to go car shopping. Maybe I can leave my wife at home this time. That HEMI really had some get up and go...

What’s that my little voice is telling me? Never mind. Probably not important.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Surfing Lake Tahoe

My three boys have not had very much contact with snow. That’s mostly due to my wife’s natural allergic reaction to any temperature below 83 degrees Fahrenheit. She gets cold watching snow on TV. But like me, she grew up skiing, and she didn’t want to completely deny her children the experience, no matter how much she might suffer in the process – from the front seat of the running car, sipping hot chocolate with the heater blowing full bore.

The best we can do for them is to let them play in the snow. They won’t grow up skiing or snowboarding with any regularity, because going skiing as a family of five these days literally costs a thousand dollars - four hundred dollars for lift tickets and six hundred for five cheeseburgers and a small water at the lodge. Since a skiing scholarship is a tenuous gamble at best - and only one of the boys is displaying any real coordination - we’re just going to go ahead and save for college instead. We’re actually trying to save for four tuitions – three for the boys and one for me. I want to go back with them. I had a blast in college! That might have been because my dad didn’t tag along, though, but who knows?

We live in California, in the Central Valley that sits next to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sierra Nevada is an old Spanish term that means “steep road to casino covered in ice.” It never snows down where we live, but we can visit the snow like tourists in under an hour, any time we feel like it. Sorry, Wisconsin... and almost every other state.

Not too many people are aware of this, but the California side of the Sierras usually receives some of the highest snowfall totals of anywhere in the U.S., and way more than anywhere in Southeast Asia. I say usually, because in the recent few years we’ve received about half an inch of snow in the spots that normally get thirty feet. As a result, all of our lawns are brown and we can only shower every other week, and only if we pair up.

We’re having our first wet year in a long while this winter, and the snow is once again piled high where we keep it, a convenient fifty-minute drive from our house. Again, sorry, Wisconsin. It was time to head for the snow, so my wife put on twenty-seven layers of clothing and we headed up the hill.  

We are a little light on snow gear and toys, though - again, due to my wife’s severe temperature allergy, and our financial aversion to ski resorts. We go to the beach a lot because it’s free. I never have to pay $185 to get a “beach pass.” The flipside – there are no sharks on the ski slopes. It’s a give and take.

So, we own wetsuits and boogie boards for the kids, but not sleds and skis. Or snow pants. Or snow boots. Or good gloves... nothing, really. So, we borrowed some snow clothes for the boys, conveniently omitting the information that Son Number Three’s snow pants were really owned by a girl in his class, and off we went for a weekend in Tahoe.

The boys had a blast the first day of sledding, zooming down the small hills and flying off the jumps we made. On the second day, we got a little more adventurous and headed up the side of Mt. Rose to the public “snow play area,” which is an enormous steep hill that rockets you out onto a highway if you fail to stop in time. It would have been great, but the weather was not exactly cooperating.

While my wife watched in shock from the car, the three boys and I battled thirty to forty-mile per hour winds across the slope, along with the rest of the other idiots who decided to get out of their cars.

You know, those plastic saucers people have can really get moving through the air in a strong wind, like a sheet of plywood in a hurricane, nearly decapitating you as you hit the deck and watch them travel a quarter mile off into the trees.

We watched one lady, who obviously also favored the non-frozen water sports, chase her inflatable pool mattress all the way across the highway, where it had lodged itself under someone’s pickup truck.

Such rookies! We beach people had the upper hand that day. Boogie boards have leashes on them that attach to your wrist. Sure, the board is almost as big and heavy as the kid, so when the gale-force wind catches it, the kid gets pulled off his feet and his arm almost gets pulled out of the socket, but at least you don’t lose the board.

Those other people are probably still looking for their saucers.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!