Alas

For the few people who haven't heard yet, I made the drive from bay area to San Diego this past Sunday. I started the trip at 7:45am and arrived at the Grapevine about an hour after they closed it. Talk about frustrating. Since the highway was closed off by two patrol cars physically blocking the highway, all the traffic from the four-lanes had to be funneled to the nearest stop -- so, major traffic jam. After we managed to pull off the highway into the rest area, we braved very strong wind and stinging snow to find that all the gas stations and such in that area were closed due to weather. This meant that when the highway patrol told us that the highway was closed "indefinitely" and we should take an "alternative route", we had no one to ask for an alternative route, or place to fuel up for it.

Given that the road was closed indefinitely and that I was in no way prepared to spend an indefinite amount of time in a place with no food, restroom, or even spare blankets, I turned the car around and headed north again, tuning in, as the posted signs suggested, to the radio for road conditions. The highway patrol radio advised detour to Bakersfield, and then coming down south via 58, then 14 (i.e. detour through Tehapachi via Mojave, Palmdale, approaching LA through Santa Clarita). The rest stops closest to the last pre-Grapevine off ramp, where we were blocked off, were closed as well. At Bakersfield off ramp I pulled off to let Lucy and my parents know of the development (the Grapevine area's network was so busy that I couldn't call anyway at all) and then again before leaving downtown Bakersfield, where I called Lucy (early afternoon at that point) to double check directions and filled up on gas again, because I was paranoid.

It was a good thing I was paranoid.

58-14 was in no way equipped to handle the traffic flow from I5. This was before it started snowing. Unlike I5, there was no 90mph winds (around 40mph by my estimate at the worst places), so the road stayed open. However, many of the drivers, like myself, were planning to head to SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAS and so was not prepared to drive through snow. This meant no one had tire chains or snow tired. This meant far too many traffic accidents. This meant that from the 58-99 junction, all the way through Santa Clarita, the road was one long traffic jam with occasional areas where we can cautiously creep up to 40mph.

There were essentially no rest stops for me from that point forward. Which made sense, given that we were traveling at around 3mph in most places, and even if the stops were not closed because of the weather, highways don't usually have stops spaced every five miles. I was hoping to get through the area before dark, before the temperature dropped and the slush on the road froze -- no such luck. With the snow build up the only marker to distinguish between the lanes, we crawled on through the mountains, in the dark.

By the time I got through Santa Clarita, I was so close to Lucy's that there was really no point in taking a rest stop -- no to mention that navigating more highway ramps that I absolutely had to seemed awfully daunting. I ended up parking next to Lucy's building in an exhausted haze around...between ten to eleven pm, probably, called her and said something along the lines of, "Hi. I'm here. Can I come in and pass out now?" and she said something along the lines of "Ohmigod. Yes."

My memory of that point was a little sketchy. I did remember all of Lucy's family crowding around the door to watch me stagger in. I was fed and given hot tea and asleep, I think, within an hour of crossing her threshold. (I know, I'm such a great guest.) I emailed my PI something about being stuck in the snow and called my parents, who told me to go to sleep already, and I think Lucy made sure that all my friends can stop freaking out. I remember talking to Kate. I don't remember what I said, exactly, but I think I mentioned snow. I was traumatized by it that day.

The next morning I made my way down to LA, where, despite of Google's prediction that there's nothing worse than flooded lanes and a few local malfunctioning traffic lights, I hit traffic both as the usual spots and also in some not so usual spots. It was raining buckets in place and we had to drive at around 50mph, so the trip also took far longer than expected. Then I got to SD around noon (total trip took nearly twenty hours at this point) and saw blue skies. My mind, guys -- it boggled.

By the time I ate something, unpacked, and showered, it was close to three pm and I was so tired I was having trouble pouring water. Given that public transit to lab is two hours and I was in no shape to work late that day, I opted instead to stay home and work on the comp bio portion of my project, specifically the sequence annotation part. (Apparently you don't need to be 100% awake for pattern recognition.) Then I microwaved something for dinner, did dishes, fell into bed and slept for about twelve hours. The next day (yesterday) I was able to do my normal full day work hours, and at some point the PI came by and said, "Welcome back! How was the Tehapachi?" To which I was able to reply, deadpan, "Snowy." And then the cricket that had moved in behind the chromatography fridge during my absence began to chirp and I reflected how this was the more exhausting misadventure that I've ever had the misfortune of not being able to avoid having. Then the PI made some sort of comment about publishing manuscript and how things are published in high impact journals not so much for accuracy or rigor but for sexiness.

...I...yeah. There's not a whole lot a grad student can say to a comment like that from her PI.