The Mountain Wins Again

[gridlore]

OK, this deserves a much longer treatment, but I'm freaking exhausted and we have yet another early start tomorrow, so y'all get the short version.

Yesterday, I was stuck in the Santa Cruz Mountains for close to four hours. Attempting to turn my truck around on a narrow mountain road, I ended up with the rear deck jammed against a small cliff, and my front tires mired in sandy loam that, as it turned out couldn't support the weight of the truck.

That's not the worst of it. I was completely blocking this narrow road. I could not have planned a better spot or placed myself so close to being 90 degrees in relationship to the road with a surveying team.

After digging nice holes by trying to force my way out, I gave in and called for help. After finally explaining what had happened and where I was to my boss, I settled into wait.

And wait.

I met everyone who lived on that mountain. Most folks were sympathetic, or amused, except for the Witch of the Mountain, who demanded that the CHP arrest me or give me a big ticket. "For what?" mused the cool officer who hung out for most of the time I was up there, "For not driving past her legally questionable 'Private Road' sign and not trespassing? For having an accident?"

Also, I met a fictional character. I swear to Ghu, Harry the Mailman from Lucifer's Hammer drove up in his little Jeep. As he walked past my half-buried cab, I looked up and asked "Got anything for me?" He laughed, and replied "No, but the cable guy was right behind me!" At which point the cop cut in: "Cable? Up here? You'd do better with a dish." All this as the witch took about 400 pictures of my truck.

Her "caretaker" came out on a little garden tractor to try to shift me. Yeah, good luck. Empty, the truck masses about 11,000lbs. All he did was spin his tires. I did appreciate the effort. He was quite pissy. Evidently, he and his fellow felons had a long drive ahead of them, but I was blocking him in. Of course, the fact that he was driving a freaking 4WD and there was a perfectly good dirt road ten feet off the main one made little difference. Hell, even the Witch managed to get her old-lady Mercedes over that road! The caretaker took it upon himself to call a couple of tow companies, and gave me their numbers. "That's nice. Do they have a contract with Ryder? And do they run semi-tow vehicles? A standard tow truck isn't going to move me."

He didn't like that.

So there I sat, quite possibly the only interesting thing that had ever happened on that road. Finally the tow truck shows up. Big, snorting, purple Peterbilt tow job. He hooks me up, and drags my truck back online with the road. I get up on a section past the "Private Road" sign that turns out no be a public road (and boy was the CHP officer interested in why a public thruway had been marked "No Trespassing") get turned around, and head back down to do the job I was supposed to do four hours earlier.

At least I got paid.

At the Slightly Late Holiday Pizza Bash at my mother's later that night, isomeme observed that we seem to spend a lot of time in the mountains, judging from my posts. While we do have a pretty good amount of work up there, that is a false impression. If I do a job for people who have a wide driveway, on a normal sized street, in some subdivision here in the valley or in the East Bay, I'm not going to write about it unless something decidedly odd occurred. That's just my daily grind. I average 4 or 5 jobs a day, and they tend to be much of a sameness. Pull up, check the site (dropping or lifting, always check for obstructions and space) fire up Podzilla, and do what needs to be done. I suspect y'all would get tired of daily recitations of Pods dropped and picked up. But when I deal with tiny, half-paved roads, impossible hills, and spaces that I couldn't get a Pod into with a 55gal drum of KY Jelly, then I'll rant about it.

Sad thing is, after yesterday's ordeal, my second job today was a move from San Jose to..

..the Santa Cruz mountains.

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

LOL at 55gal drum of KY jelly. Where do you get one of those?

I promise you will never have to drop a Pod at my place. Current score is Mountain 2 Vendors 0.

[10binary-cats.livejournal.com]

Lube Mobile of course!

(for those not with one of those around it's a franchise of mobile auto tuning and repair vehicles, they come to your home or business and tune and oilchance your car etc)

(but the name used to give me and my ex-bf fits of laughter)

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

In the immortal words of Frank Zappa, "A mountain is something you don't want to fuck with."

Escape From Witch Mountain

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

It's all fascinating stuff to me, since I also drive around sizeable region for a living. Not so many mountains, but plenty of loam and muddy bottoms. I've only needed to be towed out once in 48,000 miles, but the I've had to back up a less-than-one-lane "road" for a few miles at a time.

And trains. Did I mention I met the same train four times yesterday?

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

So the old lady had marked a public road as private property?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

There was a fork, and one road was private. But the placement of her private road sign made it impossible to tell which fork was private, or if they both were private. Had I driven 20 feet past the sign on the right fork, I would have seen a perfect turn-around as well as street signs. But after recent events, we're all gun-shy about going on private property unless we have a job there.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It makes sense that you don't talk about the ordinary day-to-day work with sensible clients in properly-sized spaces. It's these crazy people and impossible tasks that are "interesting" (so to speak).

Lisa has been contemplating buying a storage container for the place here in Mehama (Oregon); however, rather than a situation like what you do with the PODS, I think she'd want a container that she'd own. I guess ideally she'd like to be able to move all of the stuff stored here in the old family homestead (whose physical condition is debatable) into the container, then if necessary move the container; however, as I understand it, that's not nearly as simple as it sounds without the specialized equipment like your Podzilla.

Anyway, if she did buy a container, we'd have to clear a good-sized space for it and make sure the driver had decent access to the area. The property in Mehama is in a rural area (although not up a mountain), and has lots of empty space, but not along the perimeter, which is fenced and/or surrounded by blackberry vines.

(I rather like having a large bramble-covered fence along the property line. Not only does it provide wildlife habitat and blackberries if we want to pick them, but nobody in their right mind would ever try and get through it. The ones not in their right minds will get hung up on the vines and we can come pick them up in the morning. But I digress.)

[kengr]

Sounds like the "fence" I want if I ever win the lottery.

Would-be tresspasser fights thru blackberry tangle to find himself facing a 10 foot (at most) wide, more-or-less-cleared strip with a barbed wire fence running down the middle.

With no tresspassing signs all along it. And more berry tangle on the other side... :-)

[ashi.livejournal.com]

Hey, I know you.

*adds*

[yohannon.livejournal.com]

Okay, you've piqued my interest... which road was this?

~Y~
(former denzien of said mountains, complete with his OWN road from hell)

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Canham Road, Just off Glenwood north of Scotts Valley.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K1186236C