Deliverance
By GREG MAFFETT
Published: October 3, 2010
“You can run, but…why?” Yes I’m a professor with a legit brain, so you can argue I should know better. And yes there is another professor to back me up if I were to run back West this evening. And maybe in a few years, maybe I do go home. But right now it’s an empty house in CA. But here… The drifts are supposed to be epic this weekend. We were going to cancel class on Friday, but now it looks like we will have class and let the kids out early. Everyone else who is flying out is trying to get earlier flights. Then there is me. On the one hand there is the 18-24 inches of snow that is coming in. When am I going to see that much snow in San Diego? Sure I can surf or skydive any weekend I want back there. But ski from the front door? Oh yeah, this is clearly a cross country ski weekend. Sure, neither I nor my brother have skis. Nor any clue where to get them. But that is all beside the point. The point is that we could…in theory anyway. Plus there is the George Eichert theory. He always said there are two ways to look at things. Take the standard navy term for a dump of a place. We used to call them pit-holes. So here are the options when you hear about such a place. “Ugh, it’s a pit-hole, forget it” or “Hey, it’s a pit-hole, let’s go see!” I’m leaning to the latter here. This has the potential to be a really epic clusterfuck. So the “let’s see” approach is screaming at me. Then there are the other options too. The snow really isn’t that bad and I get out fine on Saturday. And if I do, I’d have to figure that all the girly guys who changed their flights are long gone…so maybe I get a whole row to myself on the plane. So yeah, let’s see what this brings. To be continued… And really it is a non-event so far. One of the engineers in class mentioned that DC was right on the rain/snow line. And sure enough it has been 6 hours of snow that hits and melts. Temps are 33-35. So sure once the sun goes down this stuff should start to stick. But this is supposed to be an 18-24 hour storm and it looks like the first third of the storm will end up with a net effect of-nothing. But the stores sold out of shovels. And the media had great fun making this impending storm into an event. The key phrase on the morning news was “This is one you won’t forget…” So maybe it won’t be forgotten due to the hype that never delivered. But will see on that. It could be a monster after nightfall. The sad stupid part is that my airline cancelled my flight 24 hours before take off. Before a flake of snow even fell. Come on. Talk about your sissies. So I had to rebook to a 5 pm flight and I stay here another 9 hours. All based on weather that may never pan out. I did the drive to my brother’s place 3 hours after the storm started without a hitch. No snow sticking, no white-outs. Really, come on. There is no fight in this one. I know I go way back, being an old guy now. But I do remember when there was this place called America. It was a beacon, a light in the darkness. A place where things got done. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow…that country. I have no idea what this wimpy, whiny land around me is now. But for sure it is not a place where they plan to plow a runway so a plane can take off. Navy bases, now those are places where they can actually keep a runway open in a snow storm. And maybe that is the problem. All the guys who know how to do snow removal on an active runway are working for the Gov. And the rest of these guys are the second string. Fair enough. Let’s give this a few more hours. Ok, now we’re talking. I’ve made it to my brother’s place. I walk in and his youngest daughter is in the kitchen with him. She looks at me and says “hey you look familiar, aren’t you the taller, thinner-“ At that point my brother cut her off before she completely lost her room and board privileges at his place. But yeah, that’s me. The tall, thin, hirsute version of her Dad. It’s hard being me some days, but this wasn’t one of those days. We hunker down and wait. The snow isn’t really sticking during the day, but after nightfall it starts to pile up. G and Ashley are up early shoveling. I do an hour of yoga and join them in round one to clear off the sidewalks and the cars. My rental is cleared off, but not dug out. We are sort of waiting for the plows. Plus my flight was still 24 hours away and I had little faith that the airport would actually open. We watch Deliverance on the big screen. I have to say that film kind of sucked. And I was not a fan of good old boys after that one. We played enough online poker that we pretty much couldn’t see by dinner time. But after dinner Dulles is saying they would still open on Sunday. But G’s development had yet to be plowed. So we had to dig out my rental car. That was an hour long evolution. About a half hour into, I thought we had the car dug out. But G is a maniac about snow removal. ‘Meticulous’ is how his wife describes it. Basically this had turned into a test of which one of us is going to break first. If you know the history you know the answer. Neither. So we had the street clear to asphalt after an hour. At that point I back the rental out and find…there is no way it is going to make it up the grade in his development. While we are doing this his useless neighbor, the one who had my rental towed when I was back for the wedding, was out digging out her four wheel drive machine. I suggested loud enough for her to hear “Hey we should have Annette call a tow truck on me again!” (why I didn’t call her by her full name, Fucking Annette, eludes me). Anyway, G says get a taxi. I call Washington Flyer and get the answer “We are open 24/7 365 days a year to get you to Dulles!” Ah great I think. Then I get a real person, or something close to one. She says that they aren’t booking any trips for the next two days. “Oh, so you mean 24/7 363 days a year?” apparently she did not have the requisite sense of humor to do her job. So much for that useless entity. Next I call the rental car company Hertz. A guy answer and gives me his name. “What’s the frequency Kenneth?” I ask. Ken seemed puzzled by the REM reference and how it tied in to his corporation. Anyway, I asked about the rental and what I had to do since it was snowed in. The answer was that I had to authorize an extension for an extra $67. Wow, talked about your missed opportunity. Here the flippin airport was closed and Hertz’s answer is to extend my contract. Here they had a great chance to develop some customer loyalty by extending it for free. But no, extend it at cost to the customer. But listening to the menu I hear they have roadside assistance. Ok, I try that number. They say nothing tonight, but they could get a truck out tomorrow and charge me $110. Really? Now that is even less helpful than Kenneth. I really got the message that Hertz was not really #1. Or if they were, wow. The other guys must be totally fucking useless. I talk to my brother who does bring up the issue about dropping off the car at the airport before the storm and giving me a ride from the airport. Yep, that might have worked, but the rental car had higher clearance than either of his vehicles, so I had to think I was in the best shape if any of us were to get out. But even the highboy rental wasn’t getting out. So yeah, it appeared I was hosed. But then again, maybe not. Ask if he knows anyone with a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Turns out he does, his carpool buddy Helen has a sister with a Jeep Cherokee. Cool! Now granted we have at this point spent 4-5 hours shoveling. And her car needs to be shoveled out. And its 6 miles away and there is three feet of snow on the ground. And my brother is doing really well in an online poker tourney. Now of all these factors, which do you think caused the most problem ? If you guessed “His wife” you were right. But the poker was a close second. I pull up google maps and find that Helen is only 2 miles away as the crow flies. 2.5 if we take the most direct streets and cut across an empty lot that may require some trailbreaking. But it’s doable, especially for a couple of legitimate ironmen, non-pussified triathlete he-men muthas like us. We can do this, I know it. And of course this was the whole point of this drill. I could have flown out early, but even as I was out in a 10 degree wind chill scraping snow, I was beaming. I thought briefly about how even this mundane an activity is one of the things I’ll miss when I’m dead. Just being out here with family fighting the elements, joking around and insulting each other. It’s life. This week in class I rounded a corner in class and saw a spitting image of a friend who had passed away and well, it had me in the frame of mind to appreciate this I guess. I was thinking back on the only two snows I remember from the east coast. One was in the early 60’s and we went to our grandparents so my mom could sploot out another kid, teddy or joe it was. Then the other snow was late 60’s. My two uncles, Mike and Phil, decided we should get a toboggan and ride down reservoir hill. Great flippin idea, but all the sliding things in York were sold out by the time we hit the stores. Still, it was the memory of me and my crazy uncles. So you know, I was doing my best to pass that on a I was now Ashley’s crazy Uncle Greg. And so here we are sitting around Saturday night and I show G the overland route and he agrees, no hill for a climber. We can do the run. This is 9 pm. At 9:45, he’s still playing poker. But he has also had the discussions with his spouse who assures him we are nuts. I take no exception to that. Of course we are nuts. That is the whole point. Sane people left town on Thursday. I was looking to ride this out and be on the first plane out of town. I’m on that plane right now waiting for take-off. The caption just came on the PA and said the airport authority lied to them about the snow removal and so they are holding off on the 20 minute de-icing, so we are even further delayed and off course I’ll miss my connection in San Fran and probably end up either waiting there for hours or just renting a car and driving to San Diego. But you know that somehow if I’m breathing air and pumping blood, I’ll be in my classroom at 8 AM tomorrow. Because, well, that is how this goes. So anyway, we have two iron guys who can do most anything and this sensible spouse tossing up all the reasons why this is nuts. Talk about adding fuel to the fire, I could of hugged her. G is getting more and more miffed and so I know there is no question now that he is in. Of course he has to do this. And really I’m listening to the objections. And I flash to deliverance with Bert and his busted femur and realize that if one of us goes down on this run and busts a leg, well, the other guy is going to have his hands full. But the main roads are clear and there are cars every 5 minutes it seems. So we are at low risk to get hit and low risk to be completely stranded. It looks like a good time to push our pocket Aces all in. So as this is going on Ashley gets a text from her friend Fez. Fez has a truck and has been out driving. And yes, Fez can give us a lift to Helen’s. Now, on the one hand I really want to do the run. But on the other, I know this story will be the only one I ever write that features a guy named Fez. It’s G.Maffett hall of fame material on that alone. So now our hopes are pinned to a guy named Fez. About 45 minutes later, we get the call that Fez is 5 minutes out. We are getting ready to hike to the main road when Ashley’s mom asks if she is warm enough for the 200 yard walk. Now here I once again have to digress. Ashley lived on the streets in Hollywood for maybe half a dozen years during a phase of her life that few people thought she would survive. This kid is durable is all I’m saying. But I had to smile at the question. It’s very much like her dad’s observation about her life out west compared to her diet. His summary was “She can put a fucking needle in her arm, but she won’t eat red meat? WTF?” Well yeah, I kinda see his point and his Mom’s concern. The kid is something of an enigma, I’ll grant them that. But she walks us down to the corner and the truck arrives. Out hops Fez and Steve. Pretty much the Mountain men from Deliverance. Ah, now we are talking. How could this possibly go wrong? They really are good guys. G points them to the back entry to the gated community and it turns out it has not been plowed, but there are tracks. Steve is driving and he mentions “I’m not steering, I’m just holding on to the wheel while The Beast finds the tracks.” The Beast lost the track once and we had to back up and try again. There was a bit of nervous laughter for a second as lets face it, we all knew this was nuts. But I offered up “Ah its all material for the book.” Fez got a good laugh out of that and said “I should start using that line…” Steve agreed. Neither of them realized it wasn’t a line. They got us to Helen's and all was well. We brought one shovel along and Helen had one we could borrow. G picked up the keys. The Jeep was parked a few hundred yards from the house among 8 other cars. Thank goodness for the modern invention of remote entry. At least we could figure which blob of snow to dig out. We had about 12 feet by 10 feet by 3 feet of snow just to get to the bumper, then we had the side and the snow on the truck. 500 cubits was my rough estimate. We dug in and snow started flying. I’m not saying we are ready for the pro snow removal tour, but the senior tour? Oh yeah. We’d seen a 100 winters between the two of us, and here we were between 10:30 and 11:30 at night shoveling out a Jeep. It was just awesome. We get it out and are on the road home, but we still have the legit problem G’s spouse brought up. We needed to park the Jeep somewhere that it wouldn’t get in the way of plows. We try the library, we see cars, but they were stuck there from before the snow. This is not looking good. But we head back to the strip mall and that has been plowed. We park in front of the Giant and we are good. Its ¾ mile back to G’s house. We start walking, but 100 feet into it, G says “Ok lets do it!” We break into a run. Just like the 200 yard swim, he lets me take the early lead. But once I crest the first hill he closes the gap. We are side by side as we enter the complex and figure his renowned kick will kick in, but 100 yards from the house he utters “Ok, it’s yours…” So he had me by half a length in swimming and I’m about the same in snow running. Fair enough. We get back in the house and he announces “There is no way I could have done a day like this two years ago!” which was pure truth. That was the problem. Two years ago he was nothing but a rash of health problems that centered around him being 20-30 pounds on the high side of 200. Now he’s 20-30 on the low side and shee-it, the boy has game. I rack out for the night and set an alarm on my cell phone for 5:15. He says what time do I want to leave. I say 6 and so he sets an alarm for 5:30. I put my cell on vibrate so the emails and text messages don’t interrupt the 4 hours of sleep I might get. At 5:30 he pops in and wakes me up. WTF? Oh yeah, my cell phone alarm was also on vibrate. Having a 161 IQ is no help if you don’t actually use that IQ. But lucky for me I had back up. He sets off to jog back to the car and I get a shower and some coffee. He gets the jeep into the development just fine and we are off. I have mostly been a fan of small energy efficient cars. But I have nothing bad to say about Jeep products from here on out. This bad boy delivered. We hit the toll road and wow, asphalt! They did a great job clearing that highway. It was pristine. No trouble at all getting to the airport. And when we got there, there were people manning the gates and I got checked in fine. But the delays started. 8:22 was pushed to 9, then 9:30. It’s now 10 and we are still sitting here being de-iced. No question about the connection now, there is no doubt I’ll have to be rebooked as I’ve missed it. So more fun when we land, well, presuming they get us off the ground. There is a heap of learning curve here. The de-icing guys tried to de-ice this plan yesterday and the airport authority shut them down. So that left a layer of melted snow to freeze overnight. And of course the place is jammed full . So with max loading they really need all the lift they can get, so yeah, we’re here for a while yet. Anyway, I get to the airport and I get checked in and I’m watching the show outside. I see everything that can move snow is being used on the tarmac. There is one jeep and two pick-ups operating next to the plane. The silver pick up gets jammed in the snow and a 5 colored pick up is pulling him out. They both get out of their truck and sure enough, they could have been brother of Steve and Fez. A couple more good old boys out playing in the snow. They really are the stars of the show today and eventually a crowd of 15-20 future passengers gather at the windows to watch the snow drifts disappear. One Asian lady is smiling ear to ear as she looks down on what I’m sure she knows are the guys who are part of her Deliverance.
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