On the Down-slope of the Bell Curve

From as far back as I can remember, the unofficial claim to fame of this cultural no-man's land I live in called Inland Southern California has been that we're an hour from the sea and an hour from the snow. It seemed appealing enough to us, but for the people actually occupying the desirable areas along the coast or in the mountains, it was further confirmation that we valley dwellers were just living in exactly the wrong place.

I never really paid much attention to the efforts to try and talk us up in relation to the communities surrounding us. It always struck me as immediately and preemptively defensive. Plus I'd spent enough time in places like beachy Orange County and up in Big Bear to know that no amount of tightly-structured logic was going to convince anyone else that Riverside and its environs weren't just an overheated bowl empty of culturally redeeming value, yet conveniently close enough to house their gardeners and whatever nitrogen dioxide they had lying around. Me, I was happy with the perks of really good Mexican food and the cheap methamphetamine unburdened by the overhead of transport costs.

The attempt to appeal by geography was never important, but further, I just couldn't be bothered. I mean, those types of ideas are meant to draw people in and I was already here, maybe not native, but persistent and endemic. Like the way E. coli is already in your intestines.

Speaking of E. coli, that pretty much sums up my disinterest in being near-ish to the coast. I've been known to kick around in the occasional wave or two, but especially when I was a kid, the first thing to hit you was usually the smell. Followed by the pink-eye. Add to that the fact that Pacific Ocean water along SoCal generally hovers in the temperature range low enough to discourage jellyfish,* humans have no business attempting to live any parts of their lives there.

The cultural stereotype of Southern Californians as beachgoers is largely over-represented. For a lot of us, we think of the beaches in the same way New Yorkers think about Times Square. It's for visitors. And public masturbation.

As for the snow option, in truth it isn't always there, but when it's raining in the lowlands, they are typically getting a dusting up about 7,000 feet, where the ski resorts are. But I've managed to somehow avoid that as well. The stereotypes about Southern Californians being weather-averse are generally true. But that's not really our fault. It's like growing up in Kansas City and trying out someone else's barbecue or being from New Orleans and sampling someone else's jazz or being from Utah and attempting to experience another city's lack of ethnic diversity: nothing else is going to stack up when you've already got it better than anyone else. If it drops below 60, we are going to mention it. There will be hyperbole. It will be incessant. We cannot help it. We are not sorry. It is cold.

Plus, do you know how many cars it takes to cause a four-hour dead-stop traffic jam on a twisty two-lane road on the edge of a thousand-foot drop in freezing temperatures with wet/icy surfaces and drivers for whom an overzealous sprinkler along a road median normally would constitute an insurmountable obstacle to driving? Just one.

So I've avoided the theoretically accessible snow as well, for the most part.

That was until about two weeks ago. The thing is, if you spend enough time coupled up with another person who is a) adventurous b) intrepid and c) not from 'round here, you're going to end up doing some things in awful despite of your years-in-development native cultural inertia. This is how people like myself end up on snowboards.

All the things I was afraid of happening happened. We got caught in the snow. Traffic was a nightmare. It was really really cold. I threw a defenseless woman half my size to the ground.**

We're going back again on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it. I can't tell if it's because I like it or because I realize one day I'm going to die and it's now or never.




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*to be fair, I think a goodly percentage of jellyfish are turned off by the lack of parking options.
**Are there more details to that story? Yes, there are.