Bakersfield never looked so lovely...

After I posted my blog on Friday, I loaded up the car drove up to visit my friend, Rachel.  My intent was to play for a weekend and then come back on Monday afternoon.  We drove to Fresno on Saturday and visited some of our favorite haunts.  In the evening we got to meet up with the third member of our college triad, Merida, and had dinner. If you haven't figured it out yet, I like my old roomies.  After this, Rachel and I returned back up the mountain.
The next day it started snowing, low on the mountain. Rachel and I decided to hang out around the house. Halfway through the day, the power went out.
In the evening, the snow turned back to rain, and then the rain stopped.  What this little warmth loving girl from the agricultural, water stricken valley did not realize is that when it snows, and then it rains, and then it freezes, the snow in the trees gets heavier, and heavier, and then branches and trees split like they have been unzipped, and it sounds like a civil war reenactment, all night long.

The night was drawn out with crackling, crashing, and thudding of trees becoming firewood, gravity-style. Our minds were filled with layman's calculations of wind resistance, trajectory, leverage, and timber strength in order to answer the ever present question, "Which of these trees will be coming through the window/roof and how much time will I have to duck and roll?"  We lucked out. Only one branch hit the roof, and aside from the loud clatter, it bounced off and didn't cause any immediate damage.

Fortunately for me, I did not have to go to work the next morning. Rachel was not so lucky!  I took naps and read books in a nice warm house, wrapped up in my sleeping bag, all day. Rachel went to an office with no power and no heat, and one working phone line, and began coordinating around the chaos. She was pretty amazing in action, even if she only got 2 hours sleep the night before.

As it turned out, the storm had not taken out just a few electrical lines, but an entire circuit tower. The cellphones were down, there had been land slides and rock slides on the one road leading in and out of Yosemite, and there was another storm coming. El Portal had been declared to be in a "small state of emergency" as Rachel put it, when she relayed the information to me.  For a moment, we thought we were going to be stranded for at least a week, but fortunately, there was a convoy being escorted out on Tuesday!  I loaded up my car, and tried to put on my chains, but the lock link wouldn't lock! (I swear they worked when I did a practice run off the mountain!)  I only needed the chains to get out of the neighborhood in order to get on the freshly plowed road to freedom, but I was failing. Three of Rachel's friends and coworkers appeared in the nick of time, first trying the chains, then declaring the chains to be ridiculous, and then giving the car just the shove it needed to get my tires onto some traction, and I was off(and, oh so grateful to Rachel's nick-of-time comrades)!

I was impressed with the response of the residents of El Portal. They started the day after the storm by checking their own damages, but after getting those issues in order, they were soon out into the rest of the town, pulling branches and debris out of the road, oh, so carefully raising and tying up fallen power lines so that cars could pass through again, cutting down precarious branches threatening to take a second swipe at homes.  The friends that found and assisted me had actually been going from house to house to hand out fliers so that the communication stricken town knew about the town meeting that would explain the risks and precautions of staying, as well as about the two convoys leaving that day.  PG&E had trucks and helicopters trudging through just about every area I saw, assessing damages and trying to make repairs, and there was another company attempting to keep the sewer lines functioning properly.

I got to the convoy really early, partially because I didn't want to risk my car getting stuck again before getting to the convoy point, and partially because I didn't want to risk that they were only capable of taking 30 vehicles and have me being number 31, so I was number 3.  I snuggled up in my car and waited, because my feet were cold and I had a book to read.  I had no desire to be outside.

The convoy drove us right past a lot of the damages, and while the damages in some of the areas were impressive, they seemed rather small in relation to the chaos they had caused. I think I was expecting a mountain to be split in half, or something.

It was quite the adventure, and though for me it was more adventure than stress, I definitely felt the tension that I had been smothering with calm humor melt when we pulled into Mariposa and I heard my cellphone chime in delight of discovering reception there.  I was not going to have to survive on canned soup and rice for the next week. 

Rachel and I made it to Fresno, and did some much needed debriefing over soup at Panera, and headed our separate ways.

I had fun.

I had an adventure.

It was exciting.

I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with my friends.

While I have a tendency to despise home for boring me, for holding me back from adventure, and for being all around uneventful, it has my mattress, my shower, my cat, and no need for chains.

I am so glad to be home.