Anna wasn’t training until the afternoon, so I picked her up and we headed to Rabland. Actually the plan had been to go to a cool town that I passed on the drive from Venice but it turned out to be too far. Not to worry Rabland was a cute town. We walked around checking out the fire station (Anna is a volunteer firefighter) and then decided to head for a cable car. Time was short so we jogged back to the car to drive up. Unfortunately we found it was closed for the winter so we headed to another cable car we saw running earlier. Whelp, this one was not for the public and to be honest it was so tiny I’m not sure I would have wanted to ride up it anyhow. Anna had training so back to Latsch we went.
After practice I picked her up and we drove to the Funivia (cable car) in Latsch. It was beginning to snow but what the heck we would check it out anyway. It was an eight minute ride up and once at the top were we happy to see a small village we explored the area before retreating to a bar/restaurant to warm up and wait for our trip down. The snow wasn’t sticking in the valley and after dropping Anna off, I headed back up the mountain to my hotel.
Not much snow until I started to climb and about two-thirds of the way up I started slipping. Not good. A few seconds later it was clear this was not happening. As the car veered towards the edge of the road. Eck. I tried to back down a bit, but this twisted the rear-end toward the ditch. At this point I was expected a crash. I straightened it out and turned on my hazards and felt I dodged a bullet. Walking to the rear hatch back, it started sliding backwards. FUCK NO! I hopped back in quickly and managed to get it stopped. Whew, this could be very bad. I’d need the tire chains if I had any chance. I was thankful for having already installed them so I understood the process. It took a bit in the dark to untangle the chains and lay them out. Okay more than a bit, probably 10 minutes. As I struggled to get them on the passenger side it required that I connected them, took them off, untwisted more, and then got the inside connected for the final time. I couldn’t get the outside latched after a bunch of attempts so out came the tire jack. This allowed me to position the chain better and just as I jerked to tighten the chain the car came off the jack. No worries, it didn’t slide and the passenger side was good enough to get me to the hotel 2km away.
On to the driver side, passing traffic made it more difficult, as I would hide on the side of the road to let cars pass before getting back to work. Around this time the Bulgarian biathlon team had to stop behind me to let a car pass. Then as they attempted to get moving again they had no traction. They slid left and right with only a tiny bit of forward progress. I didn’t see anyway they would make it up the hill, but they got past me and I got back to work leaving them to it. I struggled more with this chain than the passenger side, trying different things and finally breaking out the jack again. Finally after a lot of “start and stop” as cars passed me, I got the chain on and put everything away.
And then couldn’t find the keys. I did a quick search of the car, no luck. I searched the ground by the car, no luck. I did a detailed search of the trunk, back seat, front seats, all no luck. I had placed the chain bag on the side of the road but had put it in the car when I was about halfway installing the chains, I was worried I had put the keys on bag… The next five minutes I sifted through the snow looking for the keys with visions of calling a tow truck and finding a hotel in the valley. Luck finally shined on me and I found the keys. The drive up was a bit sketchy but with the chains it was okay and it was with a huge relief that I parked the rental in the parking lot of my hotel. That was fucked.
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