I decided I wanted to see snow earlier in the week… Well there’s plenty of it in the mountains at the moment. The decision to head for the pass was a good one I think, but how it was executed this afternoon, not so much…
First the pass is still closed, or was at 3:00 PM and 5:30 PM, which means to see snow we would have to go to alternate one for some of the white stuff. So we head for alternate one, which is a nice trail head that I’ve been to a couple of times at various times of the year, never winter, but I remember it being a nice area so off we went. Only one really big problem with this scenario is my car, a 2005 Subaru Impreza. Not something that’s really made for handling a couple feet of snow and ice. It was an adventure just to get a few miles in, close to the trail head but not near close enough. So we ended up stopping about halfway there to turn around and snap some photos. 
What made it even more entertaining was the drive back to I-90. Once we made it to normal road, we noticed a ticking sound from from the middle of the car, something that was not there when we started the afternoon. It got even worse once we hit the freeway and started doing 70 MPH, the whole car started shaking pretty bad, not a nice thing to have happen, but what can you do? So off to the dealership to get it checked out… So as we’re heading down the road at top speed to make it to the dealer before they close I call ahead to give them fair warning, turns out we missed the service department closing by a few minutes and I had to pull the "I’ve bought three cars from you guys, you need to fix this now!" card. I’m not particularly happy about having to play it, but it worked. Turns out I managed to drive a small branch in the middle of the engine area and it was wedged against the drive shaft and the engine. The service tech saw it and said, "looks like someone was doing some stump jumping"… Well long story short, he pulls the branch out of the car and no more noise and no more shakes! I’m going to call his manager tomorrow to tell him to give him my thanks and praise for being around and in good humor!
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