An adventure to embelish for the grandkids. Sunday, December 21, 2008

I woke up at 7:45 yesterday morning. I took my first shower in 4 or 5 days, put on my work clothes, poured coffee, sat at the table... and my phone rang. It was my boss, asking if maybe I would like to enjoy the snow from my bedroom window instead of coming in. What? I'm already having my coffee. Fine, I won't come work, but I'll be by soon to pick up my tips. I walk through the snow and ice to work, pick up my tips, and bs with my boss for a little bit (actually my boss's son). When I tell him we're planning on driving to Port Townsend the next day, he tells me about the huge storm coming through - everyone's being advised to get in their houses at noon and stay there. He says that if it were him, he would just leave as soon as possible.

I go to Fred's for some breakfast stuff and call Rob on the way to tell him what Todd said. Freddy's is packed and it's only 9:30 on a Saturday morning. When I get home, we talk seriously about the feasibility of leaving in just a couple of hours. After seeking advice from both of our mamas, we decide it's the smartest thing to do if we don't want to be stuck in Portland. I've got chains for my car, Rob's driven on ice before, and we'll have Micheal and Sam in the backseat for extra weight. We're packed and ready at 11, have the chains on by 11:30 and are out of the parking lot just after that. It's snowing like a bitch, and obviously not letting up any time soon.

It takes us 45 minutes to drive to Micheal and Sam's. There's at least an inch on the roads, and four or so in their parking lot. Once we get on the freeway there's less accumulation, and we can hear and feel the complaints from the chains. Around the north end of Vancouver on 205 one of our chains broke. We stopped by the side of the road and took them off the car, deciding to get chains when we stop for lunch soon. We go to Burgerville in Woodland, and find chains at a Tire Factory. They're the light duty kind (strings of beads on cables instead of actual chains), but the last ones in our size. I pay for those and tensioners, then go back and we try to get them on my car. The first set was a pain to put on in the parking lot of our apartment, before the storm started in earnest. Now it's snowing buckets, the wind has picked up, and there's at least three inches on the ground. We just can't do it. We're too inexperienced, we're too cold, it's too hard to see. Some good Samaritans help us get the chains on, but advise us to keep under 30, and drive only on snow, but that no matter what, we're going to have trouble getting to our destination.

Once those chains were on the car is when the trip began for real for me. Driving 25-30 mph the whole way, it took us 13 hours from when we left our parking lot in Beaverton to when we rolled up at Rob's parent's. This included time for lunch and dinner, one gas stop, and several breaks to chip ice off the windshield wipers. The second set of chains broke in three places, but by the time we realized the severity of the chain situation, it was too late to fix it. So we drove through it. We had lots of trouble with the passenger side wiper collecting ice and not wiping properly. The 5th or 6th time we stopped to chip ice off, the entire wiping mechanism fell off the arm. After a couple unsuccessful tries to get it reattached, we just stuck it on the floor next to the first broken set of chains, and left the arm popped away from the windshield to wave with every swipe.

We saw a worse storm than any of us had ever seen, saw people driving like idiots, saw cars abandoned in ditches along the way. But Rob drove the whole way, probably the safest driver on the road, and got us there all in one piece. My car, maybe not so much..

We felt pretty stupid in the end, but at least we got here, at least we're stuck on this side instead of the other.