12/22/2012   English German
  Edition # 99  
San Francisco, 12-22-2012

The Highway Snow Chain Man
Figure [1]: Highway I-80 to Tahoe is often snowed-in in the winter time.

Michael Over the Christmas holidays, we drove to the ski area Lake Tahoe in terrible weather conditions. Leaving San Francisco in the pouring rain in the morning was only topped by getting into a snow storm on the mountain pass to Truckee at 6000 feet elevation. To prevent vehicles from getting stuck and blocking traffic, the highway patrol stopped every single car and verified if it featured a four wheel drive with snow tires. Lacking that, snow chains were required.

Figure [2]: Putting snow chains on is no picnic.

Thanks to modern cable chains, getting them mounted onto the tires is no longer a major task, but it still requires kneeling in front of each tire for five minutes in pouring rain of blowing snowy winds to get the different fasteners locked. If it's cold and your fingers are stiff, this can be pretty unpleasant.

Figure [3]: The highway snow chain man charges $30 to get the snow chains on.

But in a service-oriented society like the U.S., there's a solution: At the side of the mountain road, there's many men in yellow suits waiting to put your snow chains on for a fee of $30. You simply hand them the bag with the snow chains and then stay seated in your warm car while the snow chain man mounts the chains on your tires in the most ghastly weather. You leave the window open just a crack to follow their instructions like "turn the wheels all the way to the right" or "move back a bit" and minutes later the chains are on. 30 Dollars isn't exactly a bargain price, but if rain is pouring down outside, it's definitely worth it. The cable chains were mounted accurately, and didn't come off even with my sportive driving style.

Figure [4]: Removing the chains is only 15 Dollars, but you can easily do it yourself.

At one point on the mountain pass, the weather worsened and snow came down really heavily and we got stuck while maneuvering between various trucks that were stranded jackknifed in the middle of the road. Before that day, I didn't even know that there is a word for the situation where the engine and driver section of a truck are pointing in one direction, and the trailer is standing off at an angle. It's called a "jackknifed truck", because it looks like a pocket knife. Shortly after our wheels started spinning without getting any more traction, a police SUV approached and the friendly officer asked if he could give us a push, which we greatly appreciated and then stayed closely behind a snow plug that had just passed. It took us 5 1/2 hours to get to Tahoe that day, not too bad, but next time, I'm going to invest in bad-ass snow chains.

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