Adventure at Mt. Hood Meadows

So, you guys remember that OC when the gang was trapped in the mall and they had to crawl through the vents and then they played hockey to decide who slept in the tent and they were forced to forage for cheese and cracker gift baskets? No?

Well, that basically happened to us last weekend. Except for it wasn't Orange County, it was Mt. Hood Meadows. And it wasn't a mall, it was the Meadows lodge. Aaaaand, we aren't in high school or tan, but we were wearing snow pants and tired from our big day with amazing powder and high winds. It's like we live parallel lives.

We took the Greasebus on Saturday. Check it out if you haven't. It's a great service and it's good for the environment. The only problem was that the biodiesel supplier had switched them over to the pure form of biodiesel which gels up at low temperatures. And for April, it was really cold up there. We had an amazing day, snowboarded all day with great enthusiasm, and then ended up back at the buses which refused to start. Various remedies were tried but temperatures were dropping and the likelihood of a succesful startup was getting slimmer and slimmer until it was clearly impossible. The teenage boys in the back were getting restless. Everyone was trying to "help" and were pushing their solutions on the drivers like they were actually retired biodiesel mechanics.

Finally it was determined that we would have to find another way down. The buses were retired for the evening and all the Greasebus riders were released into the closed-down main lodge. Liz and I were wandering the hallways aimlessly when we heard drumming. We ran up the stairs to find the bartender unleashing his drumming skills on the lodge's drumset (a band had been playing earlier). The bar was closed but he made us pity drinks in to-go cups and sent us on our way. We spent the rest of our time doing cartwheels, lounging on cafeteria tables, and sipping from our to-go cups. It was pretty great.

We got a ride down in a Meadow charter bus (it was a school bus and I ended up in the wheel-well seat, such a bummer) and we all made it safely home. It was actually really fun  and it allowed me to use the obnoxious OC reference you read above. How often does that happen? There's nothing like a little uncertainty to make you glad that most days go as planned.