We packed our things at 5:00am on Saturday morning to head up to Vermont, to take advantage of our three day weekend. The drive was perfect; we didn't hit traffic once! Not even in Jersey. In fact, I'd venture to say Jersey drivers are some of the best on the East Coast.
They git 'er done.
So, the reason we headed north was because we heard there was supposed to be a storm covering the Northeast, from Buffalo to Maine. I was pretty stoked on this, so you can understand my concern and sadness at seeing NO snow on the ground when we got as far north as Albany. It was damn cold-- but there was no snow to be seen. We continued our trek east into Vermont... still nothing. WTF was up?
On we went, and encountered snow on the ground just north of Manchester. FINALLY. We still had no idea about this storm that forecasters had told us about....
Eventually, we reached Killington and I was too elated with familiar sights and sounds to really pay attention to the lack of snow there was in town, especially for mid-January. The early season October snowfall had really tricked us into thinking there'd be a fun winter ahead... but, nontheless, I was excited to ride a familiar mountain and see the improvements they had made after the devastation of Hurricane Irene.
I'll spare you the details of the afternoon/evening, and get to the juicy stuff:
We woke up on Saturday, excited to head up the mountain, hopped in the diesel-fueled SUV, and turned the corner, only to realize the car would not speed up... but then it was too late. It sputtered and died. We attempted to revive it but it was too cold for the car to function. The diesel had gelled up due to the below freezing (I mean, -9 degrees? really?) temperatures.{Alert: Do NOT let this deter you from ever buying a diesel car-- they are awesome and great on gas. We were just dumb and hadn't thought about filling it up a little more before it sat in the cold temps.} The rest of the day was spent trying to get the car to start properly, followed by a viewing of the new Mark Wahlberg movie Contraband at Rutland's fine Flagship Cinemas and a classy dinner of Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers from Wendy's. Judge me, I dare you.
In the end, we never got to ride in Vermont. We limped back home to DC (literally, limped-- the car was in "limp mode") sad about not getting any time on the mountain, but happy to have been able to get back up to VT and see a dear friend.
We did, however, get to go to one of my favorite spots in Central Vermont:
Where I had this:
M had this:
So it wasn't a total wash.
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