#022 Californians in the Snow

Here’s the thing.  Californians can only drive in one weather condition.  Sunny.  That’s it.  If there is any precipitation of any kind, even one drop of mist, we all freak out at once and swerve our cars into the middle dividers on the 405 freeway.  It’s what we do.

I’ve seen cars turned a full 180 degrees on the freeway with a light sprinkling of rain. We are the ones who end any sort of inconvenience with “maggeden.” 405 freeway closing down for a day? “Carmaggeden.” Light rain in the forecast? “Rainmaggeden.” We are ridiculous. But we also have Hollywood. So that should explain a lot.

That being said, imagine three Californians attempting to drive through what Midwesterns might describe as a light dusting of powder and what we three deemed as the Great Blizzard of 2012.

The setting of the story was my move from Sunny LA to Colorado.  Three friends, a GPS and a tiny Ford Focus that is literally duck-taped together drove through four states to get me and all my earthly possessions to Denver, CO.   This is the story of our journey.

We started out on November 9th, 2012.  The weather in CA was calm and non-threatening.  Life was good.  We got through Nevada and Arizona with little drama.  

Utah was where we panicked.  To be fair,  Utah was just so blah.  It was flat, boring and filled with truckers going a gazillion miles per hours down a highway covered with two inches of snow.

What….SNOW?!?!?!?! More like Snowmaggeden!!! Okay that’s just what we called it. It was more like a light dusting of no more than a couple inches in any one place. But we were Californians. We decided to prepare for whatever this white natural disaster would throw our way.

What did this Californian do at the first sign of those cute little snowflakes? Why, I stopped our whole road trip and went and bought snow chains, gloves and the biggest bottle of windshield defroster liquid the gas station would sell me.

Picture this next scene. Our windshield kept icing/frosting over so visibility was barely acceptable. I was sitting on the passenger side and came up with the brilliant idea of leaning out the window with a water bottle WHILE WE WERE STILL DRIVING and try to slosh away some of the snow. Yeah. All that happened was I got a huge splash in the face with cold water after discovering that velocity and wind do exist at 70 mph. I have a college degree people. I swear I am smart.

Our next brilliant idea was to pull over and do the same thing on the side of the road. You know, at a stand still. So I stood by my car, in flip flops, and threw water on my windshield while we used my one good bath towel to sludge off all the moisture. All of this happened while truckers in their hot shot wheels flew by us, blowing snow back onto our newly cleaned windows. Productivity.

My turn to drive next. After getting back on the road, I tried a tried and true snow driving technique by following in the carved tire tracks in the snow. However. I never was good at drawing in the lines. Ahem. So I will let your imagination fill in the blanks of me trying to stay aligned to a set of slippery tracks on an hour long stretch. There was much knuckle whitening and squeals from me….and my passengers….as my tires would hit that middle section of packed snow between tracks and I swerved to correct my trajectory. Yeah.

And if my parents are reading this…well we did leave out parts of this story when we on the road so as not to alarm them. Now you can freak out. I am expecting the phone call lecture any moment. I was wearing a seat belt mom!

Anyways, that road trip was so fun and marked such a huge transition for me.

This past year has been one of endless obstacles. Every time I thought my life was about to get back to normal, my eye would explode (or get glaucoma or something) and it was back to a swollen face for two weeks. Over. And over. I had over eight eye surgeries in a year. My eye was sown shut, vaccinated 4 times, and vaccuumed. I was jealous of people who could just go to work, hang out and live. Uninterrupted.

And the next part was the hardest of them all. I had the worst fight with one of my closest friends. It was over the stupidest thing. As these things usually are. I hated it. And that whole thing put a huge gap between me and people who had such a huge part of my life just a few months before.

I kept asking God, “when do I get my life back?” When do I get normal back?

My favorite phrase that is repeated in the Bible was my answer. “But God”. Psalm 73:26 NASB

“My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. ”

But God. But God gave me an opportunity to minister to a bunch of families who I would have never met because I would have been too busy at work. But God forced me to get out of my comfort zone and find new friends and learn what friendship really came down to when times are hard.

But God grew me this last year. It might take 8 eye surgeries for me to learn patience and contentment, but I learned.

I am only human and I know that Denver isn’t this magical place where I won’t have hard times. But God seems to think my next set of lessons will be best learned out here. Snowmaggeden and all.