Monday, November 27, 2006

Winter Wonderland!

I might has well have been walking.

What is it with Seattle drivers? It snowed today. In any other city north of Eureka, it would have been business as usual, but noooooo! The minute the first flakes hit the freeway, everything comes to a grinding halt. In all the confusion, every other car either hits something or their battery dies because they're running their heater full blast with a bad alternator going nowhere.

It took me 15 minutes to get to work this morning. I left work for BSF at 6:20. On the way, it started snowing hard, and everything stopped dead. I called ahead to ask if BSF was canceled. It was, so I headed home, in a manner of speaking. I decided to get off the freeway and take surface streets. I managed to get off at Southcenter, cut across Strander, and headed for the freeway overpass near the bowling alley. Officer Friendly and his friendly friend had decided that that overpass was too steep. They had set up cones, so I got out and walked over to his car and asked why. He sounded annoyed, or I would have asked if I could go over the bridge if I put my chains on. To protect and serve. Well, half ain't bad.

My only other option was to cross over Green River at Strander, along with everyone else. And their dog (I'm convinced the dogs drive around here). After I finally crossed the bridge, I pulled into the Jack in the Box to put my chains on and scarf down a spicy chicken sandwich. From there, I headed up West Valley to Grady Way. I say headed, but what I was doing can hardly be called motion. I was glad I had the chains, because when I (finally) got to Benson, there were cars stopped everywhere by the side of the road because they couldn't get traction up the hill. It looked like a parking lot by the time I turned off.

When I got home, it was 10:55.

It had better not take me four hours to get to work tomorrow.

5 comments:

  1. I was able to get to work in about half an hour this morning. I wouldn't have made it out of my apartment complex very well without chains, though. I took them off once I reached the freeway, and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The parking lots were actually the easiest parts of my commute...no one seems to care about the roads within a few blocks of my apartment.

    But we're still both luckier than this guy:

    http://www.komotv.com/news/local/4754281.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. No Internet?! That's barbaric. You can't even mooch off the neighbor's WiFi?

    ReplyDelete
  4. That all sounds to me like a good reason to stay in Southern California.

    Niloticus

    ReplyDelete
  5. No internet barbaric? I had neither computer NOR internet for an entire WEEK.

    I will probably be up very late tonight. =)

    ReplyDelete