Yes, I may be paranoid, but hear me out: I am absolutely convinced that the weather hates me. Seriously.
I don't know whether God is toying with me, or if I am an unwitting participant in a government weather control experiment, or what, but this is true: Whenever I take a car trip (two hours or longer), the weather is horrendously bad a huge percentage of the time.
I went to college in the Bay Area, and it was a running joke in my family that whenever I traveled between school and Reno, it would storm. Big-time. Let's say my car chains were well-used between 1993-1997.
(Case in point: Ever since I graduated from college and am not making that drive anymore, it's been a freaking drought until now. Think about it.)
This has led to some bizarre moments. One of my favorites (and I say that with all the sarcasm I can muster) occurred late in my college career. I was coming home in the middle of a fierce snowstorm that briefly closed Interstate 80 over Donner Summit. I was tired from taking finals, so when the road reopened, I paid a chain monkey (the men and women -- not monkeys, at least usually -- who will chain your car up for a fee) $20 to chain up my 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity.
All was well and good until I got over the pass and through the snow. Somewhere near Truckee, I ended up taking an exit into a dark lodge parking lot of some sort, where I endeavored to remove my chains in the dark. Long story short -- after about 30 minutes of praying, cussing and calling for all the bogeymen to go away, I got the chains off, but only after I nearly got one of the chains wrapped around an axle; I seriously gave myself a case of minor frostbite in the process. How I missed the spot where everyone else was taking off their chains, I have no idea.
Maybe THAT was part of this weather conspiracy too, now that I think about it ...
Despite incidents like this throughout college, I always thought the weather conspiracy was a joke. But last winter, I began to suspect that something was up when I was scheduled, along with my Reno News & Review co-workers, to go to a legal seminar at the office of our sister newspaper in Sacramento. The day we were supposed to go, we got one of the few exceptional storms in what was one of the driest Sierra winters on record. We had to listen to the seminar via speakerphone, which proved to be about as interesting as watching a speech by the publisher of a wheat trade journal on Quaaludes.
This was weird. But the final straw came last month, when I moved down to Las Vegas.
I moved down on Nov. 24, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My furniture and most of my belongings were being taken care of by a moving company, but I had to move myself, some basic essentials, my car and my cat, Beavis. My friend Christina, accompanied me.
The trip took 7 1/2 hours. For about seven hours of that, it snowed or rained. Near Tonopah and Goldhill, I almost had to chain up. (I probably should have, actually.) It was a literal blizzard in Tonopah, where we stopped to fuel up. At the Texaco station, the clerk assured Christina: "Oh, it'll dry up the further south you get. It NEVER rains in Las Vegas."
Riiiiiiiiight.
In Las Vegas -- where it poured until I pulled up to my new apartment (although it stopped about five minutes later, honest to God) -- some parts of town got upwards of an inch of rain that day. That was the first measurable precipitation in Las Vegas since early August. I am being serious.
In other words, I picked probably the worst weather day to make that drive in years. Literally.
Now, do you understand why I am starting to think this is a little more than a coincidence? I had convinced my parents that this was the case before, and now, Christina is a believer.
Therefore, if the National Weather Service Secret Weather Control Experiment Office is reading, please: Stop it. I've driven in enough bad weather. Experiment on someone else. Please?
And if it's God who's doing this, I ask: Please forgive me for whatever I did, and smite someone else, preferably someone who talks loudly on his or her cell phone in restaurants.
And if it's just the law of averages that's messing with me ... well, then that sucks, doesn't it?
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who assures everyone traveling this holiday season that he is not planning any major road trips. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at www.jimmyboegle.com.