We had a particular case of bureaucratic nonsense the other evening here in Big Bear. It was the Saturday evening in between Christmas and New Years and the ski slopes had been doing a roaring trade. As usual, at 5:30 the principle road out of town was jammed. Not wishing our evening cocktail to be halted by such conditions - it was snowing slightly - we pressed on against the traffic to a watering hole in the middle of town. There was no movement in the on-coming traffic at all. When we left the establishment, the road was blocked going back and that was on both westward bound lanes. We decided to go around the lake, and when we arrived back to our area having traversed about 15 miles unnecessarily, we found the cause of the trouble. A sheriff was parked in the middle of the road, stopping every car and checking with a flashlight to see if chains were attached. Why? Normally the traffic is so slow at that time of night under such conditions that they were hardly going to fall off the edge of the mountain. What was the reasoning behind this particular bureaucratic foolishness? Most of the people who didn't have chains had to return to town in a very small turning area. Chains can help in certain conditions, but these were certainly not the ones to stop an entire town from functioning. How much harm did that experience do to future visits and the local economy? Come On People!
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