For Thursday, February 5, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 715 words

ENUF reign

We didn't hear last week about the "biggest storm of the season" rolling into the Bay Area. We heard of it as a storm, like any other, nothing special. I even tracked it on the Internet for a few days. Web sites mentioned "rain," not "endless, relentless torrents," or "full-speed crocodile tears."

So we didn't cancel our drive to Reno to celebrate my 44^th birthday. We drove over Donner Pass on Friday night under twinkling stars and enjoyed a dry sky weekend.

The return home on Sunday afternoon was something entirely different. We left Reno at 1:30 p.m. and reached Benicia around 8:15 -- just shy of seven hours.

That's like driving all the way at 27 mph.

On Sunday morning, with the curtains pulled fully open in our 22^nd floor room at the El Dorado, we saw the first flurries. We were packing. I said, "Oo, flurries." Susan looked. A few minutes later I said, "OOOoo, Flurries!" We both looked. In that few minutes the sky had gone from scattered specks of white to swirling waves of onion flakes. They blurred the cityscape.

We finished packing, but not in a hurry. We knew of no MAJOR storm. A little snow didn't bother us. We loaded the car, bought a newspaper, and had the Silver Legacy buffet breakfast. We ate slowly. We read features and funnies and noticed that cowboys kept their hats on. We looked for people to join the new club we invented, the ENUF Club.

When we checked out, I asked the clerk about road conditions. She didn't know, and punched it up on her computer. "Chains mandatory on I-80," she said. "Drive safely."

In my pocket I held a fist full of Cal-Neva chips ($55) that Susan had won counting cards…eh…playing blackjack the night before. We needed to cash them in. We strolled through the snow down to the Cal-Neva.

At the chip-exchange counter stood a long line of people. Off to the left, an empty blackjack table. "Hmm." We looked at each other. We looked at my watch. It was only 11 a.m. It was also my birthday. "Let's double it or lose it," one of us said, and we sat down. We took turns playing with the same pile. Susan made great friends with the pit boss, a pretty voluble young woman. She comped us lunch, but we weren't hungry. We took a rain check. Ironic, eh? Two hours later, we stood up with $44.

In a half-hour, we were on the road. A few miles east of Truckee we came upon the entrance to the I-80 parking lot -- straight ahead. Mile 25 on my odometer took us 45 minutes.

Further on, we were passed on the right by a Toyota Van with chains on the front tires driving in front of an identical Toyota Van with chains on the rear tires. We saw people pulled over with chains wrapped around their axles, or half off and flapping. Beyond the agricultural checkpoint, we saw the snow, and that was all we saw from then on.

The climb was a whiteout except for the taillights. We moved at 15 to 30 mph until we hit the western slope, where the fog set in. Our poor visibility was cut in half. We crept along in this dark, foggy, blizzard until we could finally remove our chains. Then we sped home.

Now, more about the trip.

We spent our weekend, much like the drive home, in luxuriant slow motion. On Saturday, we slept in until noon. We ordered coffee and muffins from room service. We watched television. We took an afternoon stroll through the casinos, without gambling. For lunch we ate seafood and made reservations at La Strada for dinner. Between meals we napped in our room. We watched "Tootsie." After dinner we did our blackjack thing -- $3 hands at the Cal-Neva until midnight. Then to bed.

Somewhere in that languid loll, we decided to form a club, the ENUF club. Presently it stands for Empty Nesters (in search of) Unmitigated Foolery. To join, a couple must be too old to pay for college and too young for cottage cheese. Members must also be tolerant and tolerable. The motto: "You can't get ENUF, but you can join in trying."