We're home safe and sound

[elfs]

Omaha and I made it out to two Christmas parties tonight, despite the weather. The first, even as the great storm hit, was up to herne51's place. The snow was coming down in vast, obscuring waves, but the roads were still relatively clear. The freeways were in great shape; it wasn't until we actually hit Georgetown that the road began to get messy. Still, navigable. Front-wheel drive, relatively new tires. We made it.

Herne's party was a low-impact affair, and we hung out only for a little while. There was one cute couple there, newlyweds, and when Omaha and I began a cutesy snipe back and forth Herne assured them, "They've been together a long time."

"Yeah," I said. "Over twenty years. We just stay together to shame other couples." Ouch. Omaha just about died laughing, and she said she was gonna remember I said that.

After that, the next big adventure started. We drove south on Highway 167 almost thirty miles, down to Bonney Lake, to visit a friend who was having his birthday. The snow was coming down, but there was still blacktop all the way to Bonney Lake, at which point the roads became soft snow-pack. Front-wheel drive for the win. We made it.

This party featured a lot of people from the Rainforest Writer's group, so there was a lot of chatter back and forth about characters and plot, as well as griping about the bloodbath going on in the publishing industry (oddly, though, a lot of people there said they weren't having trouble selling book-length fiction, so that's a good sign).

But Kouryou-chan could only stay wired on chocolate for so long. It was time to go home. And that was the scary part.

For all the time we'd been at the party, the snow had accumulated. The drive back along 410 and 167 was nightmarish. Soft, barely-packed snow covered the freeway. For our good fortune, there was no-one else around so we were able to drive with multiple car-lengths between us and the barriers, and keeping it below 30mph made the drive relatively safe. We made it into Kent, pulled off, and chained up. There were sections of the road through Kent that hadn't been plowed yet, and going up the hill that leads to the airport was damn scary. But the chains made all the difference, and we had full control all the way home.

We've gotten at least 5 inches of snow, probably more, and it's soft, light stuff that packs down into treacherous slick surfaces. But we have warmth and light, and we're all going to bed now.

Comments

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I drove up to Julian this past weekend -- a little town up in the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego that's become a small-town tourist destination (the chamber of commerce denied a business license to McDonald's on the grounds that it would negatively affect the ambiance of the town). I normally take a side road on the way up to stop at a local winery because of the view as it twists up the side of the hills, and the road crews were still in the process of clearing it from the storms earlier that week; it had only been plowed about a car and a half wide, there were two groups out cutting downed timber, and the plows had left patches of crusted ice and snow on the road. And I'd accepted the 'no chains required' statement and didn't bring mine. I had one point where I had about two feet of straight-forward skid when I had to brake for a backhoe tractor, but that was it; seeing some of the people skidding in Julian on the patches of snow at the sides of the road made me glad my parents taught me how to deal with limited traction conditions.

And I enjoyed the regular mind games with the tourists as I wandered around shopping; it was 40 at the winery, where I stopped first, and wandering around in my Utilikilt and a T-shirt made everyone bundled up in down jackets and vests, heavy coats and pants, gloves, and the like look at me like I was from another planet. But in the sun, it was pleasant, and even when standing in the shade (the eternal line to get a fresh-baked apple pie at Mom's) it wasn't worth putting on that much insulation for. Of course, if there had been wind, it would have been different; I remember the two years I spent in Seattle as a kid when my father was on a Navy icebreaker, and I wouldn't want to dress like that in the weather you get up there.