This is, surprisingly, one of the few roads that actually got plowed during the snow craziness. And it had probably been plowed a couple times at this point. Holy cow.
Two Sundays before Christmas, Portland got snow. Erik and I were supposed to meet at church at 11:15, and church is close to my house, so I left just before 11. It was snowing, but not very much, and I'm from Utah, right? A little snow doesn't scare me! I've never even CONSIDERED buying chains or snow tires. Little did I know about the Portland snow...and why it's SUCH a big deal when it happens here.
I made it about 30 yards before I got stuck. To get in and out of my neighborhood, there's a very long hill that goes down and back up again (like a "V"--get it?). Yep. I found myself stuck at the bottom. I couldn't get up either side, no matter how hard I tried. After sliding sideways down both sides a few times and playing bumper cars with the curb, I had to concede that I was, indeed, stuck. I called Erik and told him I wasn't going to make it because I was stuck. He told me he'd be right there. I kept trying to get out, to no avail. I didn't want to be stuck at the bottom and risk OTHER cars having the same problems and sliding into me, so I had to figure something out. There aren't really any side streets on this stretch of road, so that wasn't an option. I didn't know what to do. After about 20 minutes, a few phone calls to my folks, a few more attempts to free myself, and several offers of a ride to the top, Erik came hiking down the hill. He tried to get the car out, but he didn't have better luck.
Isn't this cool? This is part of the trouble with Portland snow--it seems to almost always be accompanied by ICE. And lots of it. And there is ice on top of snow on top of ice on top of snow...you get the picture. Eeek.
Eventually we managed to get it off the street and onto a very long driveway that serves two homes. One homeowner was fine with us parking there...the other was not. Finally he agreed to just let us park right by his house while we went to try to get chains. So we wrote down some of the info from the tires, grabbed the owner's manual, and hiked out to Erik's car, parked up above. Now, I'm not exaggerating when I tell you it was truly a BLIZZARD at this point. Wicked, blowing winds, tons of snow--NO fun.
We drove down to Safeway, googled some car places on my phone, and started our attempt to get chains. The first place we went was a) open and b) had chains (a major feat!), but we didn't have the right info to fit them. Argh. So we drove back, hiked down to the car, wrote down some more info, hiked back out, and drove back to the little mom and pop car place. NIGHTMARE!! We finally got the right chains, got the spreader things (who knew you needed those? Glad Erik thought to ask!), and drove back up to my neighborhood. We again hiked down to the car, figured out how to put the chains on, and made our attempt to get the car out. Erik drove (thank goodness!), and we tried my dad's method of backing up one side as far as we could and zooming down as fast as we dared to try to get some momentum to get up the other side. After a couple tries, we just managed to get out. So we picked up Erik's car and went the back way into my neighborhood with both cars.
This is a tuft of long grass sticking out of the snow...covered in a sheet of ice, like a straw. Crazy. This was BEFORE all the grass was covered up by LOTS more snow.
We had literally spent like 4 hours trying to get my car freed. So we warmed up, dried off, and got some food, then Erik left. He called me a few minutes and asked if I wanted him to take me to church, since I didn't dare to risk getting stuck AGAIN in the dark. I said yes, so he came to pick me up. We got to church...and they had cancelled the services because of the snow.
HOW DISAPPOINTING IS THAT??!!??!!
So that was our first day of craziness.
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