John’s Ramblings

The forecast was for a bit of snow last night. One of those vague “could be zero, could be four inches” kind of forecasts. Terri came home from work, and after a quick visit was ready to head off to lead her water aerobics class at the YMCA. When she loaded her stuff in the car at 6:15p, there were a couple of flakes here-and-there, but that didn’t ruffle her feathers a bit, so off she went (despite my entreaties to allow me to chauffeur).

The precip was similarly light at 7, when I thought I could make one quick dash to the store for a couple of quick supplies. Trip to store, fine. After I got back in the car and headed toward home, the snow got thicker and thicker. By the time I got to the bottom of our hill, there was 2 inches on the ground and nobody was getting up our hill. This is a five mile trip one way, 20 minutes max!

A quick perusal of the situation yielded the following thoughts:

1. I had chains, which I could don fairly quickly and use to get home.
2. Terri had no chains, because her car is new and she just never drives in the stuff.
3. If I went home, I’d get there in time to turn around and go rescue her somewhere.

So, I put the chains on and headed toward the southern reaches of Auburn. About halfway to the Y the snow decreased dramatically, so much so that I had a very hard time convincing her via cell phone that it was indeed nasty out, and that she should wait until I arrive. Worried about car theft, she opted to try to get her car to the bottom of the hill we live, where she could leave it in a well lit and highly trafficked location. I don’t think she really believed that the situation was all that dire, and that perhaps the flu I had suffered in the days before had drained me of common sense as well as everything I’d eaten for the last several days.

Her “pucker factor” increased significantly in that three mile journey and she emerged from her car at the appointed parking area wide-eyed at the change in the scenery. United in a vehicle with proper traction, we attempted the ascent. Our first attempt was thwarted by half a dozen vehicles strewn across our steep and heavily cambered hill. One car could be seen 20′ below the grade of a road, having slid completely off and down an embankment into someone’s side yard. We took and alternate route up another 4 lane road, dodging two cars that were not equipped for the conditions. Once on top, we had to traverse south to get to our neighborhood and we encountered a couple dozen more cars all over the road, people wandering the streets, and nobody else had chains on. Hey, it’s snowing, folks!

We weaved through all this dysfunction, and made it home unscathed. We fared far better than most, which speaks well of being prepared. My son was similarly prepared but it took him 4 hours to get from work in Seattle to the exit of the freeway due to the weather and Seahawk game traffic (normally a 20 minute drive). He made a similar observation that nobody had chains on their car (I suppose everyone with chains on was already home?). Even he was far better off than those who drove up from Portland, Oregon for the game, as it took them 15 hours to get home!

Today, everyone stayed home. Terri’s car remains parked at the bottom of the hill. She took the day off to hang out and watch the snow, and to try to keep the hummingbird feeders from icing up (the hummers are wintering over this year, 1st time). Brendan had classes canceled, and work let him off his shift. My only commitment outside the house was for the bike ride tonight, but that’s an “Ice and snow cancels” event, so no ride.

I’m making salmon and black beans for supper, but we had quail for dinner. No quail were harmed however. These three puffy birds dropped in just around sundown tonight to freeload from the platter that Terri had put out for the Juncos and Chickadees. The lighting is dim, but I snapped about a zillion pics to get this view of the chunky freeloaders.

The weather-forecasting folks are hemming and hawing about snow on Wednesday night. Could be zero, could be 12 feet I suppose. With this much snow on the ground I doubt seriously that road conditions are going to improve enough to let me lead a Cascade group ride on Thursday night. I now must contemplate a solo outing for my 20 miles, or wait until next week to cross the 4,000 mile threshold.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.