Thursday, January 11, 2007

   Another snow day?
We had a little bit of bad timing yesterday.

They predicted snow overnight Tuesday night, but we only got a dusting. My wife had an appointment about 15 miles away in the afternoon yesterday. It was about a 20 minute drive - nice and dry, good traffic. We got there about 3:30pm, finished up there and made one additional stop to buy a part I needed for my motorcycle. We left there before 4pm.

I decided to take the backroads because the freeways would be starting to get heavy by 4:00. The first part of the drive was normal. Not much traffic. After a few miles, it started to get interesting. It started snowing. Well, I think it was snow. I am not much into the white stuff, but it looked kind of like a cross between snow and hail. It looked like little styrofoam pellets hitting the windshield (but they made more noise). Very white and round. The roads pretty quickly became white. It was all pretty good until we turned on 124th Ave NE. We stay on that road for 1.5 miles & there is a slight downhill followed by a n uphill. Not a steep hill, just an incline.

An hour.

It took us over an hour to travel a mile and a half. I was watching the people going the other direction as we were heading downhill & noticed quite a bit of tire slippage. One person actually stopped in the middle of the road to chain up. This road is 1 lane in each direction with a suicide lane, so blocking a lane is really not recommended. We finally got to our uphill section.

As we approached our uphill section, I noticed quite a bit of foot traffic. People with nice shiny shoes talking on their cell phone. It didn't look like they were prepared for walking in bad weather, so we figured they didn't intend to walk when they left. Then we started to see the abandoned cars. There were a number of cars that just pulled over partway up the hill. Luckily, my wifes car has traction control which kicked in as we started up the hill. We made it - slowly, but in control. I love traction control. Once we made it past that section of road, it was not too bad. Overall - 20 minutes to drive there - 2 hours back.

Last night they said that the snow event would be over by 8pm. We went out to dinner and a book signing (I'll let Yensid talk about that - she knew who he was, I didn't) and got home just about 8:00pm. Our driveway was a little wet, but there was no snow sticking. This morning - oh, look - another snow day. Except that my wife has a dentist appt today. So, I expect in a couple of hours, I will be out shoveling our driveway (road). I counted the number of steps from the bottom of the driveway to our parking area (where it is flat) & I think it was 130 steps. That's a lot of shoveling.

I am reading a book on sushi, so hopefully, that will be the topic of my next post. One of the things I learned so far is that most Americans have never had wasabi. Most of the "wasabi" available in the US is actually a paste made of horseradish, flavorings and coloring. I did find a tube of actual grated wasabi & am anxious to try it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Until next time.

-bunraku
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