Baby, It's Cold Outside

It's not the snow so much. Yes, we have snow. But it's the ice that is the problem. Yesterday's commute home from work was awful, really awful and we were lucky. We left work at 3 pm, thinking that was a clever move. Little did we know we had left a little to late to miss the disaster window.

We took our usual route through the I.D. and up past the PacMed building. But we had to detour around PacMed because a bus was blocking the road, couldn't make it up the small incline in front of PacMed.

That took a while and was a little dicey on the messy side streets but we made it to the bridge only to come to a complete stop. As you approach the bridge, you can see most of the way up the span so you know what you are in for. The troubling sight was that not many car were traveling up and across the mid-span. Not a good sign but what could we do? We were on the bridge and it would take as long as it would take. And it took a very long time, over and hour, to get to a point where we could see clearly what we were in for. Many people exited at Harbor Island but if you hoped to get across you had to run a very slow gauntlet past people trying to push cars anywhere to get them out of the way, past cars spinning their wheels on the ice, past cars slowly sliding sideways. Terrifying.

We made it up and over, slowly. As soon as we got off the bridge we pulled into Taco Time so S could take the wheel and I could use the bathroom. When I got inside the place, I realized I was shaking. I thought for a moment and determined that I wasn't shaking because I was cold but from nerves.

We still had to get all the way down 35th Ave., which is up hill the whole way. Roads were icy, buses were stuck, a couple cars spinning wheels but we did it.

Once home I kept thinking about the people stuck on the bridge in the dark, in the wind, in the cold. S and I kept thanking the powers at large for getting us home.

The snow continued to fall and the wind roared all night. Now the sun it shining and the sky is blue but it's only 19 degrees so there is little hope of leaving the house today. Even the garbage trucks aren't pressing their luck. So we're hunkered down, drinking coffee, enjoying our good fortune.

Stay home today, Seattle.