You know it *should* have been a normal weekend. Well at least, a normal
weekend when you're trial chair of your club's agility trial that you've
planned for a year. A normal stress and fun filled event.

I mean, 16" of snow really isn't that much. In Wisconsin and the North
country they probably sneeze at 16". In Buffalo they spit in disgust at
16" of snow. And after all, the 16" of snow was THRUSDAY night and the
trial was SATURDAY.

I got up Friday morning and thought, "Ohh ****. What do we do now."
Because in Columbia, MO, 16" of snow in 6 hours is a lot of snow.
Frantic phone calling ensued. Calling the trial secretary in Kansas
City. Calling the judge in Chicago. Calling the AKC to talk about what
happens if you postpone or cancel a show. Calling the fairgrounds
manager, who said, "I can't find anybody to plow, you can't come here
today."

Double ****.

Calling the club president. NOT calling the whiney club member who
wanted one of us to come shovel her out (are you NUTS!?! I can't even
get out of my own driveway!)

Friday was a beautiful sunny day, and sun was forecast all weekend.
Surely, we reasoned, the roads will be mostly back to normal by
tomorrow. So we made the decision to push the start time of the trial
back to 11:00 on Saturday and soldier on, after the fairgrounds manager
told us he could have it ready for us by 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

The snow was heavy. A friend had oh so kindly purchased a snow shovel
for me on Thursday morning, but she picked one that weighed at least 15
pounds all by itself. Between frantic phone calls and emails I shoveled
off the back deck and a path to the dog door so Zipper wouldn't
disappear never to be found again. Then I started shovelling out to the
car. It took 5 sessions to get to the car and shovel around it, taking
till mid-afternoon. The drifts were 2-3 feet deep all the way around the
car. And after that, I was done. I couldn't lift the shovel any more. No
signs of any plows. I-70 closed in spots. I found a neighbor to shovel
me the rest of the way out to the ruts that some 4WDs had made in our
road. And I'm thinking, what have we done?

It ended up taking the trial secretary over 9 hours to get to Columbia
from Kansas City, generally a 2 hour drive. The judge made better time
from the airport in St. Louis, but it took her an hour and a half to
make the last 20 miles into town. Multiple, multiple wrecks.

I was hoping against hope that our neighborhood would be plowed by Sat
morning so I could be safe getting out. No such luck, so at 7:00 a.m. I
braved the ruts. My road has a downhill hairpin at the end, leading onto
a highway access road that has a very long downhill. On one side ditch,
on the other side a 40 foot drop to the highway. I'm a GOOD driver in
snow and I almost didn't make it down that hill--it's the most
terrifying thing that I've ever done.

Once we got to the fairgrounds there was a path plowed to the building,
but no parking! So we parked inside (big building) as many cars as we could.

Amazingly, it all turned out okay. About half the people made it on
Saturday. Like a lot of these events that happen in extreme
circumstances, everybody came together. It really had the feel of some
of the old, small agility trials where we were all just friends chipping
in to help. Bonnie Drabek was a super judge and had her usual really fun
courses. We had some nice runs, lots of laughs, and lots of hugs. On
Sunday we had about 3/4 of the entry there.

And my road is plowed, but much of Columbia still isn't. Much talk now
about the woefully underprepared road crews (apparently we have a total
of 15 snow trucks, two of which were not running, and this is a town of
120,000 plus in a county of probably 300k. It's *still* very dangerous.
If we had known what a bad job our road crews would do, we probably
would have cancelled the trial. But we got off lucky. No one had a
wreck, no one was hurt, and as a bonus we get a great "do you remember
when" story.