Don't you just hate it when you take a trip with your buddies and you are the one who gets stuck driving?  I never used to have an issue with this since I used to drive one of the most impractical cars out there, a 1993 Toyota MR2.  Just to refresh everyone's memory, it has 2 seats, a mid-engine layout resulting in a miniscule trunk, leaking t-tops, and its terrible in bad weather, namely snow.  Now that I drive a car with a real trunk, 5 seats and 4 doors, it seems like I get screwed into driving every where I go.  Even though it's a modded 2005 Subaru WRX, it's still the most practical of all my friends' cars.

This time, though, it didn't come down to interior space.  It was all about the drive train.  The upcoming road trip entails a trek up to Mammoth Mountain for a little snowboarding.  330 miles of "fun" lie between home and a beautiful, snow covered vacation atop a giant volcano, with a big piece of wood, plastic, and metal strapped to my legs during the day and a suffering liver at night.  Along this fantastic voyage to this wonderful place lies some naturally occurring substance that the average Californian has never even encountered in their entire life time: snow.  Since living in southern CA, or SoCal as it's so commonly called, means perfect weather all year round, most SoCal-ites have no need for 4wd/AWD vehicles.  Lucky for my wonderful and grateful friends (pick up sarcasm here), I drive a car made to perform under these unthinkable California weather conditions, so naturally I got screwed.

Now its time to throw on my exhaust silencer so we don't get migraines, chew the hell out of my trunk/ backseat so we have boards to ride, pad the interior so we don't get bruised from stiff suspension pummeling on crappy roads, and borrow a radar detector so I don't get pulled over AGAIN.  Not to mention put a nice 600+ miles on the odometer making the car due for its next oil change.

I shouldn't be whining considering I have a free place to stay when we get there, but I still needed to vent.  Anyone else who cares to rant about being forced to drive places, feel free.  On the bright side, I get to blast around the snow and pretend I'm a rally driver.  4 wheel snow drifts, here I come.