Rock and Roll

I have so much to say that I don’t even know where to start. It’s been two weeks since my last confession.

In case you don’t know, it is not always easy for me to get on the internet. You take for granted your smart phones and your high speed internet. I do as well, at times. However, now, today, I do not. I am staying with my parents for the holidays. They do not have cell service. They do not have broadband. They have a land line, which works most of the time (more about that later) and they have….bum, bun, buhhhh…..dial-up. Yep. Dial-up. You thought that most people in the world had high speed internet? Well, you are wrong.

When I am not at my parents, I am usually traveling. While most places do have faster internet than my parents (imagine that. Africa – Medium Speed. California – Internet like a turtle) it is not always easy to find a computer, or one that has the internet. Needless to say, I am not one of those bloggers who blog every day. Some people I follow even blog multiple times per day! How do they do it!? I don’t know.

Here in California, in the mountains, in the “civilized” world, we can’t look at photos; we can’t check our Google reader; we can’t do much. So we just don’t do anything which includes the internet. It is too frustrating to try to get online. So we try to find other things to do instead. You would be amazed at what is exciting in these parts.

First off: Rocks.

My parents live on a very windy road. In case you don’t know it, it is in the Mountains near Sacramento. Think of Lake Tahoe. If you have been there, you know it is beautiful. There are endless spans of green pine, cedar and fir trees. There are peaked snowy mountains. There are windy mountain roads along gushing rivers. There are tiny mountain towns. People ski and snowmobile for fun. They sometimes have to do this to get to their houses because the roads are not plowed. It is the boonies. I love it. I think it is beautiful.

However, with beauty (and boonies!) comes danger. Snow creates accidents. Windy mountain roads are slippery. Mountains are full of…you guessed it. Rocks. Now you know where I am going with this story. Last Friday a rock came down on the highway and a lady ran into it and died. Yes, I said A ROCK. One rock! Here is a photo from the local newspaper.

On Tuesday my parents went “to town” (yup, we say that. We live that far out of “town”) to run errands. About 30 minutes after they left (and in the middle of a batch of cookies! Luckily the stove is gas!) the power went out. With it went the phones. This is the phone I was talking about before: the one and only phone, the land line. So I sat in the dark with no phone and no TV, trying to read my book with the light of two candles.

Yesterday (today is Thursday the 16th, who knows when this will actually be posted) there was another rock slide. This actually closed the highway. The big rock in the photo above was huge, but “luckily” only covered half of the highway. Mind you, there is not really a way around. If this highway is closed, you are SOL. Unless you have a 4WD vehicle, know your way around the mountains and are prepared to drive in snow, you have to wait. They said the road would be closed for about 3 hours. It was still closed today, 24 hours later.

So, we are on a roll. In the week I’ve been home we’ve had two rock slides, one causing a death, the other closing the one-and-only highway for at least 24 hours. We’ve had a power outage; we’ve lost our phones; we’ve had an unusual amount of rain. We’ve tried to trap a skunk (as of yet unsuccessful) and we’ve almost run over dozens of deer (without any luck).

Who says life is not exciting in the boonies without internet!?