I'm not exactly sure what is happening up here, but the weather this winter has just been HORRIBLE. Today my commute home was quite an adventure, even for the babysitter who would occasionally get a phone call from me giving her an update on my position. It all started with picking up my car at the dealership in an area of Seattle that I'm not too familiar with. It had already started snowing by the time I left work, start the clock. 3:15. When I head out on the road, I look down and realize the tank is on E, literally my range predictor said 0 miles. So in an unfamiliar area, I hunt for a gas station and fill up. 3:45 Hit the road again, trying to make my way to the freeway. 4:00 on the freeway, traffic is moving, and the snow is really coming down. I decided to go across the lake, which is not the way I normally go home, but thankfully I did so. 4:15 On bridge. Waiting. Listening to traffic reports telling me how there's a car slid off the road ahead. Call sitter and inform her that I'm probably going to be late. Call Jeremy, ask him to head out to relieve sitter. 4:25 Rolled forward, finally. Start rolling across bridge. 4:50 Made it to other side of bridge. Jeremy calls, from his office. He sat in parking garage at his work for 15 minutes before saying forget it. I say, if you can make it to the freeway, I can pick you up on my way home. Continue to roll. 5:15 Jeremy calls to say he made it to another building but the cell phone service is sketchy. I ask him to come down the on-ramp of his exit so I don't have to leave the freeway. Make it past the dozen or so cars that slid off the road on the exit before the one I told Jeremy to meet me. The road suddenly clears of cars and even though the road is now covered in ice, I'm rolling along at a good speed. 5:35 I pull over on the side of the freeway and wait for Jeremy, who is running down the ramp to meet me. I move over to let the New England driver take the wheel. 5:40 We roll, merge, and move in to the lane we need to be in. 6:30 Call the sitter, we are at end of freeway, just past Target and know we will at least make it home tonight. We tell her that she's probably staying the night since the roads are so bad and that we expect to be home in an hour. Less than 4 miles to go, and I expected it to take an hour. 6:50 Make a turn on the busier street with less of a hill in hopes to make it closer to our neighborhood. Pass 3 cars on side of road. 7:00 Pass 6 other cars, one car parked next to another, with a car abandoned on the other side of the road, which leaves a passage big enough for just one car at a time to get through. With cars on both sides of the road trying to get through, we have to wait our turn, and finally turn into a neighborhood that we occasionally walk thru. 7:15 Leave the car at the 'enabler house' since we couldn't make it up the hill. Walk home. 7:40 Walk in the door. So happy to be home and have power.
We woke up Saturday morning to temperatures in the 20's. Checked the weather, and the weathman said, "There will be a few flurries today, but don't panic it won't amount to anything." So around noon, it started snowing. No flurry, but snowing. I wanted to snap a photo of the ice rink coming down our hill, and you can sort of see the snow falling by the dumpster. I thought it might blow over, hoped it would just stop. Then after the second hour of snow, I decided to give up hope. It was a four hour flurry. Yesterday the forecast was for 39 today, but this morning they have rolled it back to 35. *sigh* Jeremy managed to get my car back this morning. So now we just need the ice to melt.
