Yay?
The weather’s been crazy this winter here in Seattle (or so I’ve been told). It’s snowing here again, a day later than what the original forecast was. Tekman and Xyon left like way early to avoid it. Derek and I stuck around and had dinner and left around 10 to avoid the horrendous traffic that the maps were showing.
Although, not all is bad.
I first took West Lake Sammamish and that road although a bit windy, was very nice to drive all. Due to the traffic I guess, there was basically no snow on the road, only a few cars all going about 30MPH (vs 5MPH on 148th which I initially took and then pulled a U-turn and drove towards West Lake Sammamish). It was like driving on a rainy day, where people were just a bit more careful than normal. Oh yah, I had also filled up my tank with gas as I had less than an 1/8th left and I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, when I got out of West Lake Sammamish and passed the 90, the hill was blockaded. There were little red cones and a police car parked there stopping people from continuing onto Lakemont. I had my GPS system so I turned left and continued hoping for it to find another route. It did and it seems to connect right back onto Lakemont on top of the hill. I decided to try it. However, this route was less taken, so there was more snow and ice on the road. I got to a point where my card would just not go up anymore. Do note, there have been cars parked on the side of the road all around this area. I guess they just wanted to go home and didn’t want to go through the crazy traffic. However, looking at my GPS system, it was going to be about a 2mi walk which I decided to give the west entrance a try. The Lakemont entrance I was trying was from the north.
I got on to the freeway 90W which was pretty clear and merged onto 405S and took the Coral Creek exit. Once off the freeway, there was a long line continuing onto Coral Creek. I decided to try to take a detour, however it turned out to be 30 minute mistake. Though I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not. I’m still not sure what caused all that traffic on Coral Creek. I’m guessing people were having problems getting into that part of Issaquah? At first I thought it was because everyone was trying to get onto Forest/Lakemont because all the other exits were closed, but the turn lane into Forest/Lakemont only had a few cars.
The drive up Forest was okay. When it was going uphill, cars went up one at a time. So this is why I said maybe my little 30 minute detour was a good thing. A car got stuck in the middle of the steep hill. Cars one by one went by it. It was my turn and I got stuck around the same area. The guy came up and gave me a push and I managed all the way to the top of the hill. I parked my car and came back down to assist him, but we only managed to go up a couple yards. He decided he was going to just park his car there for the night and I bid farewell. Little did I know, I was stuck again. I just needed a little push to get some inertia and that great guy came to help me again.
The rest of the trip was pretty easy. Going up Cougar Mountain was a bit scary. At times, my wheels would be spinning at 60MPH when I’m really going about 15.
But it appears the HOA of my condo lot paid some snow plow car to plow the snow in our lot. However, there was still snow on my driveway and it took me 3 times ramming up my driveway while trying to avoid crashing into my house before I made it into my garage. I was actually contemplating just parking my car in front of my garage, but looks like my car won’t have to freeze outside tonight.
Looks like I’ll be working from home tomorrow.
Abandoned cars on frozen roads Slide Show (from MS newsgroup) – You can read the original article here: Abandoned vehicles litter Washington roads