snowpocolypse

on january 27th we were blessed with snow. LOTS of snow. we live in DC where if people even hear of a report of snowflakes they take the day off because they don't have the proper driving skills or equipment to clear the roads. you may remember last year this area had "snowmagedden" and whole central eastern seaboard didn't move for a week. this wasn't quite that bad, but pretty close. i love snow... and so does my suby. 

 isn't it pretty?! i was a heavy, wet snow that pulled all the tree branches outside my office down to eye level. it was magical. by the time i left work at 6pm the storm- and i mean storm... it was thundering and lightening except instead of pouring rain it was pouring snow- had stopped but the snow was still coming pretty hard. took me nearly 20 min to clear my car and the wipers were in constant motion. i quickly discovered i wasn't going anywhere fast once i hit the main road. people kept getting stuck on the downward sloping on-ramp to the highway and traffic was at a stand still. it took me an hour to make it half a mile from the office.

after another 15 min of standstill i got out and decided to see if i could help get a car unstuck that was blocking the ramp. i used her car mat under her tire that kept spinning and we got her unstuck, but her front wheel drive car couldn't go forward without sliding sideways off the road. she was going the same direction as me so i offered to give her a ride. then we purposefully got her car stuck off the side of the road out of the way so other cars could get by. once on the highway it normally takes all of 10 minutes to get to my exit for the next highway. this night however, it took 3 and a half hours. luckily i had filled up the tank the day before, but others were not so fortunate. cars were abandoned all over the place because they either got stuck or ran out of gas. so those still driving had to merge then unmerge and remerge in a different lane. i was very thankful i didn't have to pee. 

my new passenger was a sweet girl who spoke mostly spanish, but english well enough for us to chat a bit. we eventually made it to the exit and it took an hour and a half to get from there home (normally a 12 minute trip).  i dropped my new, quick friend off at starbucks along the way where her sister was waiting to pick her up.

below is a picture of the display in my car when i finally pulled into the parking lot at home. on the right is the time and on the left is the engine time. nearly 6.5 hours to go what normally takes me 22 minutes!!!!! that's an average of 2.5 mph for that distance. i can walk faster than that. UGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.  i walked in the door and immediately asked for exedrine and water. sitting for that long sitting it a car and unable to get out and walk around or anything really screws with your body. i still had to be at work the next day too. needless to say my subaru rocked that snow and the icy roads!

this is car code for TORTURE.

the next day on the way to the office the roads were just fine. most of the cars abandoned in the middle of the road had been removed by police and tow trucks, but there were still hundreds waiting their turn along the edges of the road. it really looked like the apocalypse. creepy.