I fall behind; the second hand unwinds

Snowboarding again this weekend. Which was awesome.* My friend Andrea and I decided we'd head up Saturday morning to avoid the Friday evening escape traffic. The rain, of course, was falling here as usual, so it turns out we made the right decision. My neighbor Janet had ditched work early Friday to try to beat the east-bound traffic but called me at 10:30 pm to let me know they had been forced to turn around: I-80 was closed over the summit due to heavy snow and traffic accidents. They had spent hours in bumper-to-bumper only to give up and head back to the City. Chain requirements and road closures are very common on this stretch of highway, and I can tell you from experience how sucky it is to be forced to crawl around on your hands and knees in pouring rain at lower elevations to put chains on your car, only to be stuck in 3 lanes of standstill traffic for 4 hours overnight a few miles from the summit in whiteout blizzard conditions. But I'll leave that particular tale of woe, booze, gambling, speeding tickets, traffic accidents, snowmobiling, single-engine plane flying, hot glue, vinyl, and puppies for another time.

Anyway, Andrea picked me up at 8am and oddly, it was the smoothest and fastest drive to Tahoe I'd ever had. Apparently the previous night's closures had turned enough people back who then either abandoned their plans for the weekend or continued on their ways at first light. By the time we were on the roads, they were eerily free of traffic. Which put us on the slopes by noon for a solid half day of riding at Alpine. The trees were all cloaked in fresh blankets of white, the parking lot was surrounded by snowdrifts 15 feet tall, and there were no lines at the lifts. Several times during the afternoon, as I paused in the deep powder to rest, I was surrounded only by the soft whoomp of snow falling off branches and the tinkle of fresh flakes drifting down from the peaks.

We found a cheap but surprisingly classy little hotel right on the Lake to spend the night, complete with hottub, fancy beds, and little kitchenette. And apparently both the lesbian and the gay guy looked much cooler than we actually are: the boarder chick behind the desk chatted us up about how the riding was, and where the best drops, hike-ins, and out-of-bounds bowls were on the mountain. Andrea and I did our best to keep up with the lingo and not give away the fact that we're total dorks and the only terrain park we experienced was a complete accident involving a wrong turn and several spectacular screaming wipe-outs.

On a tangentially related note, this whole daylight saving thing is a pain in the neck. Somehow it completely escaped us this year which put us an hour late on the mountain, to our complete surprise. First of all, why can't we do away with it entirely? I mean, who likes it getting dark at 4 in the afternoon in the winter anyway? Secondly, shouldn't they broadcast it to the populace somehow? Which may be harder in today's digital age when fewer people watch commercials, listen to the radio, or read the newspapers, but still. We had no idea. Were we just that oblivious?

In other news, the drive back tonight sucked. Traffic and pouring rain. So strange to me that in the middle of nowhere's flooded flat Central Valley farmland outside of Davis was bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go for an hour, yet we breezed through the notoriously standstill toll-plaza and across the bridge in record time with only one momentary heart-stopping hydroplaning blind panic.

*Sorry Caroline. I can't help it. I did think of you, though, if that helps any.