Four-Wheelin' with hillbillies.

Lebanese hillbillies that is. Last week in Lebanon there was a nice big snow storm in the mountains. In fact I got snowed in for basically two days. Further up in the mountains the snow is very much still on the ground. My cousin and his friends decided that going up there and driving around at night would be a good idea. I truly questioned the validity of this, but figured I don't get the chance to go four-wheeling up in Lebanon's snowy mountains often. The worst thing that could happen is death or being paralyzed from a bad accident. The best thing that could happen is that I have a lot of fun and get to shoot the shit with some Lebanese kids. It should be noted, that I'm nearly 10 years older than everyone I went with. So after realizing that dying in Lebanon isn't the worst way to die, I said, "what the hell" and went for it.

The kids (young gentlemen) decided to drive up toward the Sohat factory (Lebanon's major water bottling facility) way up in Falougha (note: not the Falougha of Iraq). That high up (nearly 1600m) there was plenty of snow and ice. We raced up the hills skidding and slipping and generally have a good ol' hillbilly time.

Another amusing tidbit: In Arabic they use the numbers 2,3,5,6,7,8 to transliterate certain letters that don't exist on the English keyboard. For example 7 represents a hard 'h' so written because it's ALMOST close to the arabic letter '7eh'. It's the letter used for names like Ahmedinejan rewritten with numbers A7medinejan. This, makes me actually a 7illbilly rather than a hillbilly.

Back to the news:
The driver of my car decided to go WAY up into the snow and we got to a point where even 4WD wouldn't carry us on. So three of us jumped out and let the driver attempt to right the ship. He did, but that far up, the truck basically slipped its way all the way back down to the road with three clumsy oafs slipping steadily behind. We made it back down to the road, jumped back in, and rode on. After another five minutes we came to a very large open field full of snow. I could see that we weren't the first people to go there. There were many tracks and so our car went down and did some killer doughnuts in the snow. I was having a hell of a time. We watched the other truck try to do the same in what I regarded as a Lebanese form of a machismo contest. After each side had proven his masculinity we decided to come back up to the road. I guess the problem in big field up in the mountains are that large loose rocks are buried in the snow. At night, said objects become rather difficult to see through wind and snow. My driver glanced such a rock and I became airborne within the car. We stopped to check the car to make sure no permanent damage had been done. Luckily no.

We drove on and came out to a large rode where other young men interested in machismo were entering the four-wheeling area. This road is on the other side of the mountains from my village and leads down into the Bekaa valley (Lebanon's wine region and Hezbollah <-- not a fan stronghold... Only in Lebanon). We drove down below the highest bridge in all the middle east into a town named Ain Dara and ate some delicious Lebanese style sandwiches known in the west as gutbombs and I drank a beer. I think the 10 year difference was most prevalent when I (the village's new alcoholic) had a beer and all the other kids drank their pepsi's with straws. I didn't mind, I got to drink a beer.

So we left and I had a nice time. Basically, the best case scenario happened. I'm neither maimed nor dead and I had an excellent ride. I might not get another chance to go 4 wheeling in the Lebanese winter anytime soon, so I guess in hindsight it was an excellent decision to get jolted around for a little while.