The Commute Home

 It all started at 4:30 today.  Mike and I were chatting and enjoying some coffee at the RedWest cafeteria, when Monica called me.  She had mentioned something earlier in the day about the weather maybe going south, so I assumed she wanted to leave work a little early to beat some traffic.  That was in fact the case, only ten times worse.  While i wasn’t paying attention, a slight drizzle of snow turned into a nice flurry, and all of Redmond/Bellevue had already gotten in their car, gridlocking the town.

Great.  This is going to be fun.

I told Monica I would leave work immediately, and walk from RedWest all the way to her building near 40th Street and 150th Avenue (so she wouldn’t have to drive through gridlock to get me, she had already been in a standstill for 45 minutes before she even called me).  As I walked down 148th, I got to see first hand that, yes indeed, the whole area was basically shut down.  Cars were everywhere, and not moving.  Several cars had slid against the curb and then abandoned.  And a small few were slipping on the icy roads with wives behind the wheel and husbands behind the car pushing.

I finally caught up with Monica and her little section of hell, where she was only about 10 feet further down 150th Ave from where we talked on the phone.  We huddled in the warm car while we came up with a plan.  This is where we made our first, and most impactful, well-intentioned by straight-up wrong decision.  We decided to ditch our car at a Microsoft parking lot and take the bus home.  We wouldn’t have to drive on the gridlocked icy roads in a little Mini-Cooper; let’s leave the driving to someone else!  Sounds good on paper.

We walked up to the busstop at 40th Street and the 520 highway, on the onramp to the westbound lanes.  When we got there, we found the 565 bus, which is not the one we want.  But, the bus driver made it very clear that she was the only hope for leaving the area, because no other bus has been able to get up the hill to get to this part of Redmond.  So, although this bus went to downtown Bellevue instead of downtown Seattle, we had to get in, or go back to our car.  This was our second well-intentioned but wrong decision.  Since, by ditching our car, we would have to go to the back of the line of cars that was trying to get out of the vicinity, we would be way worse off than where Monica was sitting for an hour.  In retrospect, this is just me rationalizing the decision we made; we should have gone back to the car.  But, oh well.

As we climbed onto the bus, the only two seats next to each other were the jump seats that are in the middle of those two-car buses (where the joint is in the bus that bends when the bus turns).  We sat there, and realized within 15 seconds that we were very likely going to be characters in those tragic fatal accidents that occur during snowstorms that actually end up being funny a couple days later.  It turns out these doublebuses do very poorly in the snow, and started to jack knife on the highway, with the first car of the bus turning almost 90 degrees (i.e., going sideways), and the second car of the bus still pointing mostly straight and careening towards the concrete barrier by the side of the highway.

Monica and I quickly changed our seats.

After the bus driver finally settled the bus into a nice comfortable "stuck" position on the road, she then turned into a drill sergeant and starting barking orders to the fully occupied bus.  "All the women, please proceed to the back of the bus.  All the men, please step outside and help me push the bus.  I need two guys directing traffic, please.  The rest of you, push on the count of three."  Here are some great pictures i took as I helped pushed a jackknifed city bus down the highway.

 

After 3 sessions of pushing, getting back on the bus, getting stuck, and then repeating the pushing, the bus driver finally started to admit that this might not work out.  Although it clearly broke some rules, she started letting people get off the bus while parked in the middle of the highway, since we were near a spot where we could hop a fence and get to a walking trail that ran along the road.  We took this opportunity to bail and start walking.

This is when we starting hanging out with Jose.  He was on the bus with us, and we all got off at the same time.  We had no real plan on what to do, but we were thinking that walking west towards Seattle was probably the right thing to do.  So, we started walking. 

A couple miles down the road, we then bumped into three more people that were dealing with a similar situation.  I think they were on a 545 bus (the right bus we would have liked to have gotten in the first place) at an earlier stop than where we were, but it got stuck.  They took a slightly different path, but ended up deep in Bellevue with us, walking west. 

After a group-think on what to do, we figured out that we could get to a bus stop on the 520 highway just past 92nd Ave, were buses would be working, since there is no icy onramps or offramps to deal with.  So, we partied on. 

After an hour and half of walking since we left the bus, we finally got to the bus stop along the highway, but no buses were coming.  At this point, we surprisingly had a lot of patience to wait it out, but boy, I was starting to lose the feeling in my fingers and toes.  For those who don’t know the area, there is a huge lake that separates Seattle from the Eastern suburbs, where we all were currently stuck, and there is no footpath across the bridge.  So, we needed a ride; we could not walk, no matter how much stamina we had.

Here is the picture of the crew at this point, hanging at the bus stop.

That is when the random French snowboarder in the white van showed up.  I’m guessing a bit, but I’m pretty sure he was sitting in the crappy traffic, and saw six tired travellers sitting at the bus stop.  So, he pulled up and offered us all a ride across the lake, so he could use the carpool lane.  Oh, and the van didn’t have any seats, it was just a big open van with a tarp on the floor.  Of course, we all got in.

Here’s a picture of the French guy and his action van.  Thanks, French guy!

Anywho, he dropped four of us off at Montlake (me, Monica, Jose, and some poor bastard that still had to figure out how to get to Ballard), and took the other two home, since they were going his way.

Monica and I said goodbye to Jose and the poor Ballard bastard, hopped on the 48 bus, walked another 15 blocks home from the nearest bus stop, and promptly cracked open some beers.  If my sister-in-law wasn’t around all night to babysit my 2 1/2 year old son while Mom and Dad were held hostage in the suburbs, I don’t know what we would have done.

In the future, I’d like to have an open discussion with everyone on the the public transportation system deficiences we have here in the Puget Sound are, but I’ll save that for a later day, I’m a bit tired right now.