By the Wanz
I write you on January 20th from aboard a flight out of the twilight of the 2012 Snopocalypse. For those of you in the state of Washington this month, I’m sure you remembered dozens of snowy (and then icy) Facebook pictures, delays / closures at work, retarding buslines, and sleds for days and days. All this would have been horrifically dysfunctional (or more dysfunctional) had there not been a dreaded Snopocalypse only a year prior.
Yes, that’s right. November 2010. Three days before Thanksgiving. The world (i.e.: the general Tacoma/Seattle area) almost came to a dreadful and frosty end.
On the Monday before Thanksgiving of 2010, my boss contacted me at home. She asked me if I had seen the weather reports and what not of the “impending snow fall.” I yawned a weary yes. I’d lived in Tacoma for over 5 years at that point and had dwelled in the snowy New Hampshire for a chunk of my youngster years. Snowfall didn’t frighten me. My boss lived in Olympia, so it would be a far for both of us to travel. I laughed, as not a single flake of snow had fallen from the sky SO I was miraculously unphased. At first I was like “Yeah I’m just kinda a badass; I’ll come into work.”
Later, I’d be calling myself a dumbass.
Not too long after that call, it started to lightly snow. Nothing troubling, nothing sticking to the ground, just the lightest of flakes that instantly impaired any Washington driver. My bus driver heading into Seattle was accompanied by a supervisor that day. I found this a bit odd, but not too worrisome—at first. Apparently, it was his first day driving (bah-ha!) and what a ride it was. I actually thought were gonna tip over and as soon as I could, I dashed off to bus to the safety of the Seattle sidewalks.
The snow began sticking around 11am. Facebook statuses were flurrying onto my screen faster than the flakes falling from the sky. I shrugged it off; it didn’t look too bad. Then, my friend who worked along Pacific Avenue posted a picture of a local Tacoma bus tipped over on its side—a Number 1 bus, which I usually take from home to my commuter bus. I cringed, reading the update that it took a sharp turn and tipped over in front of the local university. My friend had dashed out of her store and helped the terrified transitters—none of whom were fatally injured. Minutes later, my gabby-jabby boss calls to inform me of the bus accident (and I bit my tongue and didn’t ask what she was really doing when she was “working from home”) and I let her know there was nothing to worry about and that it was just a fluke.
As soon as I hung up on her, I endured a mini-freakout. My bus had nearly tipped over on i5, one did in Tacoma—as obvious omens go, this was one of them. I was about time I figure out what the hell was going on, weather-wise.
To recap, that day it snowed, it stopped, it started to melt, and then, the temperatures were supposed to drastically drop. I contact my fellow Tacoma-to-Seattle-back-to-Tacoma commuters, one of whom worked in Bellevue and the other who worked in Downtown Seattle like myself. I slyly suggested for her to safety, I should join her from Downtown back to Tac-town (mostly because I didn’t want to die on a commuter bus). She agreed and I worked for a few more hours before scurrying away at 2pm.
When I reached her office building, snow was still fell while people swiftly poured out of their buildings and jobs, closing early, and basking in panic as they tried to find the fastest route onto i5 to get home. I got to my friend and we began what was and has been our longest clusterfuck of a journey home—and clusterfuck is a generous descriptor by the way. My friend in Bellevue, which was about 30 minutes north of us, left at the exact same time we did from Downtown. Our journey from her office onto i5 is usually a 5-10 minute affair—it took us nearly 30-45 minutes to get through traffic and to get on the ice-hell known as i5.
Imagine super shitty traffic due to construction, an accident, and a sporting event of some kinda alllll combined. This was worse. Cars, trucks, buses, minivans, and any other vehicle all skidded along, littering the laneless i5. Snow and ice caked the ground and it was every person-for him-or-herself out there. My friend and I cranked the heat, blasted the jams, and did some awesome in-car-dancing while our sanity swiftly diminished upon realizing how long getting home was taking.
Another hour had passed and we’d barely made it toward SeaTac. By Tukwila, i5 had decided to disguise itself as a parking lot. Cars had spun out and veered off to the side of the road, car beside car, like a Target on Christmas Eve. All the while, large 8-or-more-wheelers would be fishtailing, failing at their attempts to regain control of their beast of a vehicle, which then ended up blocking the majority of the lanes on i5. The smartest of drivers would find an opening, rev forward, and then be unable to break, either fishtailing off to the side, jamming up the newly discovered path, or hitting the driver ahead of them. We inched forward at a tortoise-esque pace, carefully following the chained-tracks of an Auburn-bound bus.
30 minutes behind us, my other commuter companion was driving sololly along the very route we were traveling. Somewhere between my friend and my traveling party, another friend was bus-bound, quietly riding amidst the moist and stuffiness of the 590 buses headed to Tacoma. As we inched passed a giant truck that had blocked all but one lane of i5, everyone else behind us was coming to a very definite stop. Everything and everyone stopped. For hours. They had shut down i5 with my other friends still sitting in wait.
As we continued to dash (at 5-or-less-miles an hour), my friend who drove from Bellevue would proceed to be trapped in her car, struggling to remain calm for nearly 7ish hours, without any movement, by herself, with anxiety and panic washing over her. In a 590 bus not too far away, my other friend would be spotted and then corned by none other than her ex-boyfriend.
Truly a ride home from (snow)HELL.
These friends wouldn’t get home until about 1am-ish. Meanwhile, in Tacoma, folks who commuted the opposite direction were faced wit similar distresses. A 45-minute commute exploded into a 6-hour journey home. Frodo wouldn’t have even put up with this. People abandoned their cars, escaped from buses, doubled back home, even gave up on getting home and just booked hotels. Madness took over the road.
When we finally reached Tacoma, it was a hellish winter wonderland. We scooted into the city—avoiding the slippery-hilliness of Downtown. My friend dropped me off as closed to home as possible. My Bellevuely-friend would get home, hours later, and then enjoy champagne and Sex & The City all the next day, swearing and cursing at the world. Upon getting home, I got a call from an old-classmate who had concerning new and wanted to check in with me about my safety—she had just read the news about the tipped over bus and naturally was concerned. I laughed, just happy to be home, and explained how I wasn’t even in the same city when that happened. Next to call was my boss, who I let know I was safe and not planning a trip to work tomorrow, or the rest of the week (or maybe forever).
It was from this that we all know that when the weatherperson tells tale of a forthcoming snowy-apocalypse, we stay the hell home or walk to work or guilt your boss into giving you a snow-sled.
Got a transit story from last year’s snowy-apocalypse, or even this year’s snopocalypse, or snomageddons from years prior, share them here! Share your experience in-snow-hell-transit either on our blog or our twitter account at https://twitter.com/LifeInTransitTJ or send us an email at LifeInTransitTJ@gmail.com and we may post your message / picture!!
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