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| The family going to visit the neighbours at Chez Szondy |
Yesterday I saw the daughter off to the car pool to school and settled down (or at least, as much as two attention-staved dogs will allow) at the computer for a morning's bash when I looked out the window and saw snow falling out of the sky in a way that paperweights don't. The weather radar showed the entire Puget Sound area socked in by a major winter storm and within an hour I was in the Blazer to pick up the daughter from school before the roads became impassable.
If you're thinking that I was hurtling over snow drifts and waving to passing dogsled teams, you'd be mistaken. In fact, there was less than an inch on the ground, but the geography around here is so mountainous and the roads so winding that even the lightest fall can bring everything grinding to a halt. Fortunately, the valley wasn't hit too badly, so once I was off the hills I could get around without any trouble.
Having collected the daughter and our neighbour's boy, who was in the same situation, we returned home. The daughter went to play in the snow at the neighbour's house and I went back to work. For about ten minutes. Then there was a hue and cry that made me think that someone was being murdered.
Someone was.
Carl the Cattle Dog had spotted the neighbour's cat; a thick-headed moggy who lived indoors and on the occasions when it managed to slip out the front door demonstrated a singular lack of understanding of how things worked Outside. One of these things is Carl, who has hated cats ever since he got popped in the nose by one as a puppy. The neighbour's cat, not having sense enough to leg it, just stood there as Carl charged the invisible fence, bounded across the lawn, snatched up the cat, and proceeded to shake the life out of it.
The kids intervened, which resulted in the daughter receiving a skinned knee and the neighbour boy discovering what it's like to have a cat take refuge on top of one's head.
That put paid to the middle of the day. Then the wife came home early because she didn't want to be on the motorway in the evening when the snow started to change to ice. Since it still looked mild out, the worst of our road still free of snow at the bottom, and the valley roads still passable, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and get the last of the Thanksgiving shopping done.
It would have worked, except while we were in the Costco warehouse picking out a turkey and the odd bit of Stilton the real storm broke. We tried to make it back to the main road, but on a steep hill there was a car stuck and we had to turn around. In doing so, we had to face a steep hill in the opposite direction and got stuck ourselves. Then we slid backwards and sideways toward a four-foot deep ditch. If we went into that, we'd not only be stuck, but the drop would probably wreck the car for good. We avoided that, but only by literal inches. Sweating cold bullets, I tried to coax the Blazer back up the hill; hoping that there was enough traction for the four-wheel drive to bite into.
By a miracle we managed to get to the top of the hill, but by now the snow was falling in flakes the size of sparrows and I could barely see more than a car length ahead. There followed a trip home that would normally have taken 25 minutes that now stretched to two and a half hours as I kept to the middle of the road while the wife kept a running comment on how close the shoulder was so I could find the middle of the road. Every intersection was a question as to whether I was going to get stuck or skid. Every encounter with another vehicle was a gamble with a possible collision with a momentary headlamp blinding thrown in for good measure. Then there was the surreal touch of crawling along at 15 MPH on a valley road only to come up against some idiot walking his dogs in the dark without leads in a snow storm and having said idiot leaping in front of my car and screaming at me to slow down.
I don't know where they get them from, but I wish they'd put them back.
Then came the worst as we wound up into the mountains again. Now the choice wasn't just ditches, there were steep banks crashing down into pastures and a river swollen with brown, icy cold water fresh from the Cascades. Finally there was our home road that boasts a grade at the bottom usually associated with ski jumps and has to be negotiated from a dead stop because of the turn. We powered up it. I watched the speedometer for any sign that we were making headway. The needle said 25 MPH, but through the driving snow I could see that actual progress was more like 5 MPH. But at least we weren't standing still and we weren't going backwards, so it didn't matter. If it weren't for the four-wheel drive I'd have been fishtailing all over the place.
After what seemed an eternity, we finally made it back to Chez Szondy, but conditions were so bad that even pulling into the drive was a white-knuckle event.
Ever have one of those experiences where you want a stiff drink afterward? This was one of those times as I got through two G&Ts (heavy on the G) inside a quarter of an hour.
Today, the sun shines, the countryside looks like a Christmas card, and the roads are a thick sheet of ice that I have no intention of risking except in dire emergency. The daughter is off sledding with some friends and the wife and I are trying to keep the house warm enough that the pipes don't burst.
And my prospects of getting any real work done have gone from slim to nil.
A well, at least there's brandy for the cocoa.
This is what it was like in Seattle last night.
1 comment:
That is why the Americans don't fare well in the WRC Rally, but Finns do.
The driver should have changed studded tyres on already a long time ago. Given to the fact that most American cars are rear driven, a sandbag in the trunk would have helped as well to improve the grip.
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