snowpocalyse 1-19-2012

Posted by on January 20th, 2012  •  0 Comments

Snowstorm 1-19-2012

Monday was a holiday for our college: Martin Luther King day. Tuesday it snowed a little so we started an hour late at 10. I had 4 students. Early Wednesday morning it snowed 4 inches and they cancelled college. I was suffering from cabin fever drove in and climbed at the gym with Sue and Fletch. Sue tried out Christines body harness but it wasn’t the “cure all” solution to her back problems.

Wednesday night I got an automatic text from college saying classes had been canceled. The mailman had just brought the kids Christmas presents from England (peacock handwarmers). These handwarmers, invented in World War 1,  run 24 hours on lighter fluid. They run so hot that they ship with little cloth pouches to prevent burning your skin. I texted Clint and asked him if he was still going skiing the next day. He said yes.

As it happened, his Christmas present to me was a free ski lift ticket. I checked Sue’s job, and her school was also having a snow day. Family ski trip! It was ironic that both our jobs were closed due to bad driving conditions…so what do we do?  We drove 3 hours into the mountains through increasingly bad roads to go skiing in 14 inches of powder.

Though I now have a 4 wheel drive car, and the best studded tires on the market, I still drive like an old lady in snow. I learned to drive in my 1975 Gremlin, may she rest in peace. It  was a rear wheel drive sled and the lessons I learned about snowy driving seem stuck in my brain. I had to keep pulling over to let people pass me at 50 when I was driving 30 and 40. I don’t trust our RAV4 to be able to stop in a hurry if I come around a corner and find someone sideways.

I did get better on the way back. The road to Stevens is sooo long. Eventually I stepped it up to 50 and kept up with the prevailing traffic. On the slopes, the snow was very forgiving and I didn’t fall for the first couple hours. We got there at 2 (Clint works swing) and skied until 9, though the last hour I was so tired it wasn’t too much fun.

Clint took me through some tree skiing, but you have to turn very quickly…basically on a dime, and my telemark turns aren’t there yet. I had a great time out on the open slopes, powering through my tele turns. I’m tempted to try out the new downhill ski’s the kids have bought recently, but I don’t want to give up on my new tele gear. I only bought it last year and have a long way to go before I have it mastered.

When we got home the power was out and Puget Sound was in the grip of a “snowpocalypse”. We were driving in ice and snow all the way to Clint’s house. There was 12 inches of dense snow in front of his apartment and I was very glad I had my four wheel drive RAV4.

We woke up to an icy house and a 12 hour power outage. I slept in while early bird Sue started the wood stove. I’m sitting on the couch by the warm stove as the trees dump huge piles of snow on the ground outside. A huge 4 inch branch, what the loggers call a widowmaker just landed on the driveway. I went outside to move the car to a safer location between trees and it felt like being in the middle of a mortar attack. I guess it’s melting a little but it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. A huge branch just took out our Comcast cable internet line…funny, it still works even though it is lying in the snow on the ground. Sue says the barometer is over to “storm” again…the snowpocalypse continues.

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