I forgot about this one. I just saw these pictures and they reminded me of last week. I really like the pictures, but I also made them on weird-people-day:
EDO and I got turned around by a stretch of snow on the road. I tried it, and maybe could have hammered through, but there was more snow above, so I decided we really weren't going anywhere. I parked below the snow and we scrambled for a couple of miles. We went up and over this little saddle and down through another canyon. We popped back out on the road probably a mile above the Chev. At that point, the road was totally snow-packed. As we started down, I could hear revving. After a while we came across two Hispanic guys in a really nice new Chevy pick-up. They had street tires and clothes. No chains, no shovels, no boots. They were revving and hammering and backing and plowing and slipping and grinding and making slow progress in a foot of dense spring snow. We walked by them and I told EDO, "they are as good as stuck. They can't turn around, they can't back down, and they can't get out of the truck." We could hear them revving for another 10 minutes as we worked down to the Chev.
When we got there, we found a Jeep stuck in the first snow pile—the one that I had backed away from. There was no one in it. We started the truck and headed down. After a couple of miles, we came around a corner and found six people walking on the road: A heavily pierced and tattooed twenty-something woman, a teen-aged gangster looking guy, and four kids under the age of three, the youngest being an infant. As we passed them, I said "hey," but they didn't respond and didn't make eye-contact. The three-year-old was walking, but the rest of the kids needed to be carried. I said to Ellen, "I wonder where those people are parked." Then it hit me: The Jeep. I stopped and backed up. "Do you need help?" The lady cheered up, "My Jeep is stuck and I don't have phone service. How far is it to town?" "Six or seven miles. You've walked a long way. Do you want to get in?" The six of them piled into the back of the Chev and we went down.
After another mile, I came around another corner and there was a fast-n-furious car with a spoiler on the trunk sitting in the middle of the road. Stopped. Engine off. I drove up and looked in. Another young, urban, Hispanic guy. He was trying to use a phone. Of course, there was no signal. I said, "hey." Of course, there was no eye-contact. I drove on. EDO and I looked at each other. "What is going on?" (VSO thinks that at least some of these people were looking for a place to start a "garden." It could be.) When we got to town, we dropped the six at the Lion's Park. The lady, who did have a phone, said she was going to call her father. OK. We went home. Weird-people-day.
