The Blizzard of 2006, and a Snomobile Adventure!

Wow, what a day yesterday!

We woke up in the morning, looked outside and saw a fairly typical amount of snowfall. We'd heard 4-5 inches were expected, and it looked pretty benign, so Jenna went to work down the street at Old Navy, and I headed downtown via light rail. In the car on the way to the station, I was surprised to hear phrases like "the worst Blizzard since 2003"... but I continued on. The pic below was the scene when I left work around noon, right after a postal worker ran past me in SHORTS!



I got to work on time, and just about everyone was there, but the snow was coming down harder. We got an announcement around 10am that the front desk was closing at noon, and everyone should head home when they feel they need to. So I left around 12:30, and got on the train south. Our train had all kinds of mechanical issues with the doors and supposedly the track switcher was getting jammed up with the snow, so my usual 30 min trainride took over an hour.

After getting to the light rail station near our place, I decided not to try to drive, after watching cars slide around and talking to Jenna about her drive home and all the people stuck in our parking lot. So I chose to take the bus that runs near our apartment. I found the right stop, and huddled inside the bus shelter with about 10 other people waiting to go east. We were in there a while, and started doing stuff like packing snow up against the bottom of the shelter to keep the wind out. We waited about a half an hour (some had been there for 45 minutes before that), and their bus came, but not mine. I waited for another hour, with a short break to hop into my car for a quick warm-up, and the bus still hadn't come, and the other buses were getting stuck in the quickly accumulating snow. So, I decided to walk the 1-1/2 to 2 miles home, rather than spend the night in the parking structure.

I walked for a while, and quickly realized the snow was tough to walk in, but not impossible. I got past the freeway offramp, where I saw cars fishtailing everywhere, and continued down Parker road (major arterial) slowly. Pretty soon, I heard a loud engine noise, and turned around to see a guy in a SNOWMOBILE pulling up next to me. He said "Hey, do you want a ride?", and I gratefully accepted, having no other alternative. I hopped on, and he hit the gas.. It felt like we were flying down the road, we were probably going no more than 40 mph, but with all the stuck cars and trucks, and the blizzardy conditions, it felt like light speed! I originally just kind of cautiously held on to the guy's sides, but when we started going fast I clung pretty tight, thinking I was going to fall off at any moment! It was pretty hairy weaving in and out of traffic and going over bumps and whatnot, but we made it pretty quickly to my destination, the big intersection near our apartment.

I hopped off and thanked the guy for the ride, and immediately saw a car stuck in the snow. I asked the guy if he needed a push, and he said, no, there wasn't anywhere to go, and he'd just seen two other rear-wheel drive cars get stuck trying to get into the parking lot he was heading for (the same strip mall lot I was planning to park in if I drove), so he was just going to leave it in the median and wait for his friend to get there.

So I trudged through the snow taking a shortcut to get through to our complex. I got to our parking lot, and found another neighbor stuck in the snow, trying to park somewhere. So after changing into some snow clothes, I spent the next hour with some other neighbors getting her unstuck and situated.

Finally we spent most of the night sitting by the fire and watching all the news about stranded motorists and people stuck at the airport... what a crazy day.

Today is a "snow day", so we both have the day off, and we're just hanging out looking at all the white stuff piled up everywhere... over 2' officially last I heard, but Jenna's car is basically covered as you can see in the pic below from this morning (all you can see is the two windshield wipers sticking up!)

Ella hated going outside last night (it was a lot windier and more miserable out), but this morning she was loving it! In the pic below she's standing in a tire track from a Forerunner that somehow made it out of the parking lot this morning...


White Christmas indeed!