Nighttime Truckee snow fell at a pretty good clip all weekend long, yet daytime temps kept climbing into the upper 30’s. In other words, overnight lows were just cold enough to make heavy snow while afternoon highs were plenty warm enough to melt it down somewhat. In even other words, Sierra Cement.
For reasons too numerous to mention, that combination had been adding up to double black diamond difficulty for Quinn to sufficiently handle herself safely outside. Between the icy, razor sharp berms and the slick as snot roads and sidewalks, Quinn was often in over her head. To properly understand You’d of had to have walked a mile in either my boots or her pads to understand. It was hard.
I still took Quinn outside a time or two each day, but conditions, especially if you throw in the high winds, seemed to really get the better of both of us. She wasn’t able to hear my footsteps or sense my presence and so it was easiest to just throw in the exercise towel. She spent 99% of the weekend in her bed, seemingly comfortable with her eyes closed. I wasn’t too far behind her.
8:10pm, Sunday Night January 6:
Hi Autumn, this is Aaron Lubell, regarding Quinn. It’s late Sunday night and I was hoping that maybe we could move that appointment and surgery up a week. She’s not doing so well, and you can probably can tell neither am I. Don’t worry if you can’t swing it then we are still a go for the 15th & 17th. The number is 831-246-2010. Thanks Autumn.
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Pretty early the next morning, I set off on a run to fetch my van that I figured was buried in the heavy stuff. I had been parking it at and on my friend Kevin’s back lot for most of the winter. It seemed best to leave Quinn at Jeremy’s.
Simply put, I woke up with this anxious urge to get Dog back down to sea level where it appeared she was a bit more comfortable. Whether that was true or not, it was how my math added up. I knew there was going to be at least an hour’s worth of digging to get the van on the street. To me it wasn’t going to matter whether or not the surgery was going to be changed to this week or kept next weekend, I had convinced myself that being at 6000‘ altitude wasn’t doing the already high pressures in her eyes any favors. I would come to be wrong about that, which is neither here nor there.
By 9am, the van was only half the way from being dug out of its snow cave. Aside from all the snowfall, Mr. Snowplow Man had left a very thick berm which in itself was going to take a half hour of my time to make go away.
At 9:15am my cell phone rang. Sure enough, it was Opthamology for Animals:
“Hello it’s Aaron”
“Hi Aaron, it’s Autumn”
“Hi Autumn”
“So we got your message this morning, and I just spoke with Dr. Gratzek and she said she can see Quinn tomorrow at 10:20am and perform the surgery on Thursday.”
“Whoa, uh, Autumn..look…i don’t want to get into the details, but it’s going to take a real feat and some luck for me to get my van out of the snow and safely get over Donner Summit today to ensure that I can make that appointment. That being said, I am going to tell you that Yes we will be there, but there stands a real chance it’s not going to happen. So much is out of my hands.”
“No problem Aaron. I’ll put you on the schedule, and let us know if you can’t make it. If we don’t hear from you we will assume you are coming.”
“Thank you so much Autumn. Gotta Go!”
I grabbed the shovel and continued digging. By 10:30am I fired up the van and luged my way through the walls of snow. The sun was shining bright and the roads were still quite icy. I carefully crept my way back to Jeremy’s house and began the speedy process of loading up all my belongings. Time was ticking and of essence.
My strategy hadn’t changed since early in the morning. If I could prepare myself to leave Truckee around 1pm, I knew I would avoid all the apres-ski traffic, and as importantly, avoid having to chain up my automobile to get over the Donner Summit. And all we had to do was get over the summit without incident and we’d be good as gold.