Tuesday, January 20, 2026

I wasn't watching close enough as the rain slowly turned to snow

 I was driving up the Angeles Crest Highway that goes up to at least 6000 or 7000 feet like I had done with my parents since I was a child of maybe 6 or 7 years old when we first moved near there to Tujunga and eventually to Glendale where we lived when I was 8 years old to 21 years old.

So, this was where my parents and I often liked to hike the Silver Mocassin Trail over towards Twin Peaks. 

Only this time I was driving my new 1968 Camaro that was metallic blue mostly. IT was a really great cornering car and the most powerful car I ever owned up until then in my life. So, it was a dream on corners with the low slung body and wide tires I had on it. 

However, I was listening to music in my car likely and I wasn't paying attention as the temperature dropped and then slowly I might have seen that there was something inside of the rain drops hitting the windshield. But, remember I had grown up mostly in Los Angeles County and never had driven in snow likely at that point in my life. 

I had been to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico at age 17 to go to a private school for my senior year of high school but I wasn't allowed to have my 1956 Ford Station wagon Surf Wagon there in Santa Fe, New Mexico so even though I learned to live in the snow in winter there I never learned to drive in the snow in Winter there.

So, suddenly I was spinning in a circle next to a several thousand foot dropoff from the road and I thought I likely was dead either way. But, somehow I had manuevered the car to spin closer to the center of the road in the rain turning to ice on the road. I wound up facing backwards the way I had just come up the road and when I came out of the fog in my mind from almost dying I slowly but surely very gingerly decided to drive back down out of the mountains because this car is REALLY not suited to driving in snow (unless I had snow tires or snow chains or both on the two rear wheels which are the drive wheels in a 1968 Camaro. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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