Sunday, November 21, 2010

Winter Wonderland

Winter has officially blown the first rain storm into the Los Angeles basin, and with it float into my mind some thoughts on this most anti-climactic of American winters. See, Los Angeles being where it is, we don't really get a winter, at least not one you'd picture when that word is mentioned. The temperature rarely drops below 60 degrees fahrenheit, and the only other discernible change in the weather involves the somewhat novel presence of rain.

This rain is the topic of the day. Rain does a number of things in my town that I'm guessing it doesn't do in yours. Firstly, being a novel meteorological occurrence, rain causes a generally panicked pre-emptive response from your average Angelino, wardrobe-wise. In the last 24 hours, I've seen confused citizens sporting everything from bulletproof wellingtons that could withstand a toxic mud event to (and I'm not exaggerating this one bit) a fur hat with earflaps tied securely beneath a very, very stupid chin. Knee high boots are one thing, but really dude, fur? Apart from the fact that it NEVER reaches temperatures to warrant that kind of garb, how in the name of Poseidon's nipples did you get from "hey, it's raining lightly, dress accordingly" to "gee, a fur hat. Now that'll stop the drops!" The only thing missing from this misguided attempt at rain gear was like, a suede vest or something.

This level of unpreparedness bleeds nicely into the next quirky little effect of a good LA rain: the vehicular sh*t storm. The collective motorist response to a light dusting of moisture is, to paint a familiar picture, the fur hat of reactions. People across the board lose their ability to safely and sensibly navigate even the most basic of thoroughfares. It's odd. Odder still, when you stop to think that a great proportion of people in LA, and an even disproportionately larger number of people in the neighborhoods I frequent, are not even from Los Angeles. I mean, chances are these folks used to live somewhere with weather, right? Maybe driving in any sort of conditions other than monotonous perfection is like a muscle, and the drivers in the LA basin are just suffering the ill effects of atrophy.

Or...maybe it's that all the goddam street lights are broken. That's right, another funtastic fact about LA: Even the slightest meteorological disturbance, and the next day half the city's street lights go dark for about a morning. This one just absolutely baffles me. Look, I realize that rain isn't exactly a frequent occurrence, but it is an annual thing. As in, something that happens every year. Every year. You'd imagine the city would be able to plan around that kind of clock-like regularity. I've given thought to another possibility, that maybe the rain falling here has been mutated, through exposure to air pollution and other local factors, into a substantially more dangerous liquid than that which regularly touches streetlights in cities across the globe. But if that were true, then wouldn't the rain in, say, Beijing, be so fouled that it would be like burning through the hoods of peoples' cars? No, that explanation doesn't pass the smell test.

So we're left with another conclusion to draw: the second largest city in the US, one of its (gack) cultural centers, and home to just a shade under 10 million people, was not constructed with enough forethought to withstand a drizzling rain. Kind of gives you pause, vis-a-vis the Big One, no? If an all-to-predictable sprinkling of rain is capable of taking out half the f*cking grid, what's a 7 pointer going to do, unleash the goddam Kraken?

Whoa, got kinda dark there for a minute. OK, apocalyptic geology aside, my by-far-favorite thing about an LA winter is driving up into the mountains ringing the city. I don't do it because I love nature (though I do) or because some part of my Midwestern brain is homesick for a snowy day (though maybe it is), I do it to witness a rare but exquisitely stupid Los Angeles tradition: Snow Collecting.

See, Southern Californians don't have access to traditional winter weather, so snow for them remains something of a novelty, like an empty freeway, or a white bus boy. Basically, the ritual goes like this: you pile the wife and kids into your huge gas guzzler of an SUV or truck, and truck the whole fam damily up the Angeles Crest Highway, a winding bluetop mountain road connecting the valleys that lay on opposite sides of the San Gabriel mountain range. You just drive up that sucker, and when you hit the snowline you're there.

From here, you stop your "car" on the side of the road, and while your kids dart in a fun-AND-safe random pattern into and out of the road right in front of a blind curve, you busy yourself by taking the snow shovel (which you brought with you) and shovel snow onto your car. As much as you can pack. In the case of a pick up truck, the job is easy: just fill the bed. If you're working with an SUV, you have to be a little more creative. Pack the white stuff onto the roof rack, the hood, or if you want to play the game on hard mode and make your vehicle an absolute JOY to drive behind on the trip out of the hills, the roof rack AND the hood. Presto, you're good to go. All that's left is to discard any empty energy drink canisters and hamburger wrappers onto the freshly denuded shoulder of road, and you're off to the suburbs to impress your (if this is even possible) even stupider neighbors.

A couple questions come to mind. First of all, where exactly in Southern California does one even buy a snow shovel? Do the Home Depots here have a section for hilariously inappropriate housewares? "Excuse me, sir, but could you point me to the snow shovel section?" "Oh, sure, no problem, they're in aisle 18B, right between the and the rain gauges and the DIY tornado shelters."

The other thing that comes to mind is just how alien it is to me, and my hearty Midwestern composition (and NO, that is not a euphemism for fat), to shovel snow ONTO anything that you own or need to use. Every time I see a hulking SUV full of Angelinos rolling back down the hill in a snow covered Hummer, I think an old Hungarian man in Ohio dies of a heart attack.

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