Wonderland!

As a new Portlander, one thing became resoundingly clear to me yestarday afternoon; snow is not normal!

Hmmm, this is the confusing thing.
Freezing rain: no big deal. Snow: pandemonium.
Around Portland there are semi-San Francisco-like elevation changes, ranging from 100' to 1000'. This is especially true in the West Hills, or suburban Beaverton and beyond. Well, that's where I was on Sunday, at a Baby Boot Camp (BBC) holiday cookie exchange. About an hour into the party, the first few flurries started to blow in (50mph gusts!). Mine and most the BBC moms' cell phones started lighting up. We traded cookies, took a picture, and split. I had about a 30-minute drive in front of me - back through City Center, across the bridge, and home.
Annoyingly (to put it lightly), suburban roadways don't tend to follow any sort of North/South-East/West format, and they also aren't straight - at all (in retrospect, I think its b/c of all the hills). Having no map or idea of which way was North, I promptly got lost. With my gas tank nearly on E, I pulled into a gas station to fill up and get directions. By the time I became 3rd in line, they closed, saying that they were out of gas. So I trolled on down the road toward some other promising major intersection, hopefully in the right direction. It turned out to be the right way, but no one could get up the last hill before the highway. So... I turned around. After going another wrong way for a couple miles & turning around again, I finally found a gas station and was pointed in a different direction, which turned out to be another traffic jam. So 2 hours and 2 miles after I left the cookie party, I was sitting in traffic with my bladder about to burst (2 cups of coffee at the party had set in), when I saw the Max (metro train) fly by. Ureka! Paul had suggested the same thing earlier, via our neighbor's intelligent suggestion, but I didn't know where it was. I called Paul a 4th time for directions, this time to get to the Max station (Paul says it's hard to give directions when I don't know where I am).

By 4:15, I was on a train, speeding by the very highway I was trying to find! It was crawling, and the next major road I saw (I-405) was totally jammed. By 5:45, I was home. My toes were like little rocks! Brrrr! The two best things about this adventure was that earlier that day, I had decided to take my jacket at the last minute, and that I had a whole bag of yummy cookies to snack on.

I took these pics this morning, pre-dawn (Impressed? The sun rises at 7:50). Now the ice is melted, and it's misting, but there's still some slushy snow leftover (good for snowballs).
I'm getting a ride back to Beaverton today with my neighbor, to pick up the car. Hopefully, it didn't get towed!

-Anne