I have lived in California since 1971. One thing I learned about California is that when the snow starts to fall you need to purchase and carry chains. In California it is a real thing. They grant permits for people to put chains on and take them off so you don’t have to. CHP sets up a road block and advises you that you need chains because of the road hazards caused by the snow. You may need them for miles or for a mile. Either way the road block and the presence of CHP and all the guys set to put chains on for you and eventually take them off is a huge deal. I have heard that truckers hate this. The entire program as far as I know is a California thing. One of those special situations created by Californians for our own good. We are going to spend $50.00 to put the chains on and then $25.00 to take them off. Cash only. Also, if you don’t happen to have chains they will sell you some for a couple hundred bucks…again Cash only. The other alternative is to turn around and find a place to stay until the road is clear. That sure sounds like a lot of fun. I am sure there are some people who carry lots of cash at all times. I don’t happen to be one of those people, never have been. To ask me to pay $75.00 to put chains on and take them off, and possibly to buy chains is the same as asking me to cut a leg off. I will not have that much cash ever on me. I could turn around and go to an ATM somewhere. That makes sense. Hopefully I didn’t just spend three days in Reno and lost my shirt and don’t have that kind of money left in my bank account. Never mind, it was foolish for me to think I was going to get home today anyway. I will figure this out. Hope for the snow storm to pass and the snow plows to do their job and then I can make my way home.
Let us forget about this California fiasco. Let’s go to Wyoming. In places like Wyoming you better put on your big boy pants. They laugh when you bring up chains. Those are for the wimps in California. In Wyoming we do things a little different when the snow flies. We have some simple rules. When it gets bad enough we just close the road. I mean literally close the road. They have gates that they shut and lock so you cannot get on the highway. Simple, effective, no Highway patrol, no people putting on and taking off chains. You just don’t go on the highway. You can’t even find chains to buy anywhere. I brought up chains to my brother in law and he had a good laugh. I was starting to feel a bit emasculated by the entire subject. Ok, no chains for me in Wyoming, that didn’t change the fact that I was going to need them in California. I would deal with that later.
When my mother was dying Kathy and I made the trip to Wichita. I saw her and we stayed for quite a while and she was in a coma. No one knew how long she would remain in that state so we left and headed back home to California. It was winter and we reached a pass on I-80 in Wyoming. There was about a 5 mile down grade. The conditions were basically a white out. We couldn’t really see anything in front of us. You could see stars if you looked up but everything was white with snow down on the ground. It was scary. We are on I-80, in the dark, in a white out situation, going down this 5 mile downgrade and going about 20 miles an hour. Kathy put her head down, she couldn’t even watch. As we are trying to make it to the bottom of this grade we are being passed by truckers that are completely nuts. They were driving at excessive speeds, I know they couldn’t see any better than I could but it was like all of them had a death wish or they were all on something. I couldn’t believe it. Their reckless abandon struck me, do these idiots have families and loved ones, do they know something I don’t know. As we reached the bottom of the grade we saw hundreds of blinking lights. It turned out that these guys driving trucks like there was no tomorrow were in a massive heap at the bottom of the grade in the median. I didn’t have to slow down much to make my way past this pile of metal. I hope none of these drivers were hurt. I know all I wanted to do was find an exit and a motel and get off of this stretch of I-80. We did find an exit and a motel and bedded down for the night. We received a phone call that night from my Dad in Wichita and mom had passed away. The next morning we headed back to Wichita. The good news is that the pile of trucks had been cleaned up and it was daylight and the highway was open. Thank God for small favors. When we finally returned after my mom’s funeral, the weather was cold but clear and we didn’t have a white knuckle experience going back to California. I didn’t even have to buy or use chains when we got to California. I will never forget that trip and the white out. It felt like that was going to be the end for us…I guess it just wasn’t our time. Those crazy truckers actually made me drive even slower and more carefully. In that case the outcome was kind of what you thought it might be. We were saying things like…”do they have a death wish”…”something bad is going to happen if they keep driving like that”…”are they on something”. Whatever it was, we saw the results at the bottom of that long grade in Wyoming. I guess I should appreciate the California chain thing. At least I have never seen a pile of trucks in the median on any highway in California so I have to believe that their system works.
