My roommate was nagging me to go skiing today. He got some deal through Ski Market where they gave you a discount on the lift ticket and bussed you up to Sugarbush. I declined, as I didn’t feel like getting up at 5 in the morning. As it turned out, I made the correct choice, while my roommate did not. The bus got almost there - almost there - when they had a slight difficulty:

Before you say “well, it was snowing, and these things do happen when it snows,” allow me to bring your attention to this sign:

This was no ordinary mountain road. This particular mountain road went directly up and over a mountain and, as you can see from the sign, is not fooling around by any definition. Whoever wrote that sign definitely meant it. The driver apparently took this mountain road because they were already behind schedule, and taking this road would have saved 30 minutes. Rather, had they made it over the pass, it would have saved 30 minutes. Instead, 2 miles up the mountain road, the bus lost traction completely, and began sliding backwards. The driver decided to cut the wheel to the left, thereby slicing the rear of the bus across the road and wedging it in the opposite snowbank. The driver managed not only to strand the bus and everyone on it, but completely blocked the road from both directions. Take a look at just how stuck the bus was:

This is the front of the bus. It took a while for them to actually jiggle the door open. No, I have no idea what the guy in the blue vest is doing, but the guy behind him seems to be enjoying it a little too much.

This failure is truly amazing. Look at just how far the back of the bus went into that snowbank. That is a good 5 or 6 FEET. Were it not for the tree that the bus hit, it probably would have gone right through the bank and over the ditch. All in all, not the driver’s best laid plan. Speaking of the driver and his plans, there he is, vest and all, inspecting things.

As you can imagine, that bus was stuck something vicious, and vicious failures require vicious machinery to fix. So, after an hour and half of blocking the road, the Vermont State Police summoned this behemoth:

What a beast! Not even this bus was too much for this bad boy! It hauled that bus out of there like nothing.

But, unfortunately, the saga for roommate had just begun. As the bus tried to go back down the road from whence it came, it had roughly the traction and composure of someone on an ice skating rink who had forgotten to take off their skate guards. So, they unloaded everyone from the bus, put chains on the bus’ front tires, attached a tow truck to the front, chained another huge truck to the bus’ rear, and hobbled it down the mountain. Oh, and my roommate? They made him walk 2 miles on this:

Winter Wonderland! Well, almost.

They finally made it to Sugarbush at around 3pm, right about the time when I was getting up for the day.

Me: 1
Ski Market Bus: 0