Sarah unfortunately had pneumonia, but came on the trip anyway. She was feeling kinda ok, but she decided to take a nap before we headed out for the evening. At 6pm we met up with Steph, Bre and Jeremy to head to El Coyote Café, that Claire and Bobby recommended to me, for dinner.
We passed through Beverly Hills and Hollywood and ogled the mansions. The restaurant was eclectic and fun. I decided on the ostrich tacos, because how often do you find that on a menu (although I have had ostrich before), and they were great. Everyone enjoyed the place. After, we decided to head over to the Santa Monica Pier, which we predicted was going to be a madhouse.
Luckily it wasn’t. Michelle and Dan had been at the Ducks/Flyers game and met us at the Pier. We walked around a bit, took some pictures with a macaroni,
scared Steph by walking to the end of the pier over the water, watched some fireworks at 9pm down the beach, then walked down to the beach. Afterwards we went to Bubba Gumps for some late night drinks, appetizers and dessert before heading back to the hotel. 
We got back around midnight and all headed to Steph and Bre’s room, which was a mansion compared to ours ;-) and we all hung out and chatted and laughed (boy did we) until 3am. Steph had woken up at 3am, so Sarah thought it would be fun to see if Steph could last 24 hours, and she did.
Saturday morning Sarah wasn’t feeling so hot, so she wanted to sleep in. We were meeting the gang at 3pm at the Yard House, but unfortunately Sarah wasn’t up to it, so she stayed behind. We walked down there and luckily it was no issue getting a table for 20 at that time. Slowly but surely everyone arrived (ended up being 15 people). It was great to see all the people from the previous night, plus Heidi, her 2 friends, Des, James, Kym and her husband, Matt and Stephanie.
We had a great time at lunch/dinner, even though it took them forever to take our orders. We walked over to Staples around 5 and went our separate ways to either the store, or to watch warm ups. Luckily Sarah was feeling better that this point and walked down to meet us for the game.
We were all seated in the same row for the game, which was nice. The game itself was a little mellow. Not a lot of fights or penalties, so it seemed to go pretty quick actually. But the Sharks pulled out a 1-0 win, and that’s what matters. We took our traditional group pic next to the Gretzky statue, then said our goodbyes.
Steph, Bre, Jeremy, Dan and I ended up hanging out and chatting for a few hours. It was a good time.
Sunday however was the day we had to leave. Sarah and my goal was to leave town by 11am, but after getting out of the parking garage, and getting gas, it was more like 11:20am. So off we went on a dreary day. Sarah’s Mom already gave us a heads up that there was a ton of rain between us and home, so we expected that. One we got close to the Grapevine, we saw a sign that said “snow escort, expect delays”. We didn’t know what a snow escort was, but thought it would be cool to see some snow. Well, after we were up the mountain, maybe around 1pm, we started seeing snow.
We thought, cool, and took some pictures. Then after a while, it was starting to stick to the ground, and the hills were looking dusted with snow.
Then the snow started piling up more, and that’s when traffic stood still. We started off with 5 lanes (or was it 4?) of traffic, moving pretty darn slowly. Then the snow started coming down really heavy, and we started moving about a mile an hour.
Then we would stop, then maybe go for 10 feet, stop another minute or so, go another 10 feet, etc. And I have never in my life driven on icy or snow covered roads in a non-4 wheel drive before. I would press the gas, my wheels wanted to force me to the right, and I had to compensate by turning to the left every time. I didn’t tell Sarah, but I was pretty freaked. I was worried I was going to spin out, or my car was going to shift to the right and hit another car, or get stuck in the snow. My heart was racing.
There were even a few people getting out of their cars and walking in the snow on the shoulder, not sure why. On the other side of the freeway, we could see plows, one at a time going down one lane, then a row of cars following it. So we knew that’s what was happening up ahead of us too.
After about an hour from when we first stopped in our tracks, the 5 lanes had been merged down to 1.
Some big trucks sucked it up and plowed through the snow in some of the outer lanes (yikes), but the rest of us played follow the leader and I tried to keep my tires in the tire tracks of the car in front of me. The icy roads had turned into slush and snow, and was much easier to drive on. It took us a full 2+ hours to get over the Grapevine, in what took us maybe 30 minutes on the way down.
And I have never seen so many cars just stranded on the side of the road for one reason or another. It was insane. When we were close to the bottom, we noticed no traffic on the other side of the freeways, and the road was just covered in snow. We knew at that point they closed the freeway down. Which apparently they did at 1pm, and may not reopen until tomorrow or Tuesday. And we felt bad for all the people on the other side that didn’t know this yet.
We stopped at the first place we could to make a pit stop. The gas station, food places, etc had no power. OK, so we drove another 5-10 minutes to the next place with services, this place MUCH larger. No power to the whole town either.
OK, so we just decided to move on and make up some time and made a stop a few hours later. We finally got to Sarah’s about 8 or so hours later, which took us less than 6 hours on the way down. Then I still had about a 45 minute drive home. We both made it home safely, which is what matters, and we have a story to tell.
Article about the storm and I-5 closure. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cold-weather-20110103,0,3315839.story
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