Highway of Death

I thought I was working today, a one-day thing in Incline Village, so I got up early to head over the mountains to Tahoe. ~C and Zach will laugh at this post - all the locals are totally blasé about this stuff.

Do you read travel adventure books? You know how the author invariably ends up in a third-world mountainous country, trying to get from City A to City B via what the local government considers to be a highway? It's a too-narrow road, with buses, trucks, motorbikes, and ancient little third-world-country cars all zooming up and down it at top speed. There are numerous shrines to victims of the road, usually bus plunges (named for the typical headline in the NYT: "bus plunge in Paraguay kills at least 37"). The natives are so numb to the death all around them that they take the highway like it's a NASCAR oval, while the author whimpers and pees his/her pants in terror.

I am the author, and Mount Rose Highway is my bus plunge road. It is the twistiest awfulist switchback nightmare. Two lanes, with semis roaring up and down it, angry commuters inches off your bumper, and bicyclists. Fucking bikes! I am all for sharing the road and bike commuting and crazy endurance biking hobbies, but there are some roads that aren't SAFE to share, and that's one of them.

There are no bike lanes, so you'll come whipping around a corner with a line of cars inches from your bumper, and there's a half-dead gasping wobbling biker on the white line and a logging truck riding the yellow line screaming toward you and you realize this is it, you're done for. You suck in all the muscles of your body like you can make your pickup narrower by holding your breath and somehow squeak between the two. Slam your foot back down on the gas, because that asshole in the Yaris is even closer now, and get ready for another turn...

Look! Look at this ridiculous bullshit! This is 3000' feet of elevation gain in about 4 as-the-crow-flies miles. The only way you know you're still in America is the nice asphalt and towering 8' snow poles.


So anyway, I got up extra early and drove all the way through town and got on Mt. Death Highway and headed up it. Then I saw the chain signs. Yes, the scrolling text sign warned me that I'd have to chain up in 11 miles. I slammed on the brakes and made the quickest U-turn of my life. I have chains, in the garage at home, but there is NOTHING in Tahoe important enough for me to chain up and take Mt. Rose Highway.

Fortunately, when I called my temp agency to tell them I was going to be late, they double-checked and informed me that I'm a week early. The Incline Village job is next week.