More than a month ago, a huge winter storm buried the Washington area in roughly 87 feet of snow. Finally, the giant pile in front of my house is basically gone.
More than a month ago, a huge winter storm buried the Washington area in roughly 87 feet of snow. Finally, the giant pile in front of my house is basically gone.
With a large amount of snow predicted to hit the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, I made the decision to take the bus to the Metro for my last night of work for the week. The idea was that in the morning I would have an easier time getting home on snowy roads if I could let someone else drive.
Unfortunately, something went wrong with the plan. It snowed A LOT. Like, a lot. Before dawn, the bus system announced it was suspending service until some unknown time.
No problem, I had a plan. I started a few blocks from the Capitol with a need to eat breakfast and kill a little time in hopes the buses would start running again and I could easily get home:
I hope people had fun following this saga as it progressed on Twitter and Instagram. I certainly endured some chilly fingers trying to post things and walk in the gloveless cold at the same time. See, it was cold:
I had a clear target in mind for the breakfast portion of my day. There was no guarantee it would be open, but I had to try, and with time to kill it really didn’t matter. After making my way north to Constitution Avenue, I got a little more efficient and utilized the wonderful diagonal street that is Pennsylvania Avenue:
For most of my journey, the sidewalks were in immeasurably better shape than the roads in D.C. Massive shout-out to all the people out there with shovels, snowblowers and small pieces of construction equipment that I could not accurately name.
I turned north again on 7th Street, pausing to take in this nice scene in Penn Quarter and ponder making a snowman. Unfortunately, the snow was on the dry side, so I skipped constructing Frosty:
The cool folks at the Washington Post TV unit put together a montage of shots people took around the city and posted on Instagram. They included the photo above. Check out the whole thing here.
As soon as I got going again, I tried to do my part in letting people know which places in the city were willing and able to take their money:
Starbucks at 7th & Indiana is open. I have a more delicious spot in mind. #dc #operationgetbreakfastgethome
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014
Finally, I made it up the immaculate sidewalks on 7th Street to the Chinatown area that houses both the Verizon Center and a number of restaurants, including Dunkin Donuts:
On my way into the store, I walked by what the workers said was a CNN photog. I was too cold to wave. With one of my two main goals complete, I moved onto the “get home” portion of the operation. Again, I went up 7th Street, turning left on H Street to head west across the city.
Remember how I said I was posting things while walking? Yeah, that’s a bad idea, even if there are practically no cars on the road and nobody on the sidewalks:
Careful walking next to tall buildings. Almost got clobbered by a huge mess of falling wet snow on H St #dc #operationgetbreakfastgethome
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014
It was while on H Street that I really appreciated my decision to not try to drive at all. All but the biggest roads were awful:
Even more snow-covered were pedestrian plazas that only I was interested in walking this morning. Oh, and the statues:
Of course, I couldn’t walk through all that white stuff and not make a stop at the White House:
A few seconds after I snapped this picture, a tourist came over and asked me to take one of him with the Washington Monument and White House behind him. Then he asked for directions to a particular Metro station, and it just so happened that I had just been there a little while earlier (see Penn Quarter picture above).
Finally, it was time to get myself to the Metro. I went to the nearby Farragut West station to grab the orange line to West Falls Church. I may have ended up on the oldest car in the entire Metro fleet:
Ignoring the crap on the windows, I felt very good about my chances of an easy ride home once we popped out above ground:
I kept checking the bus service’s Twitter page to see if they would change their mind about reassessing at 2 p.m. and just open up since the highway looked so good. At the very least, I assumed I would be able to get a cab from the Metro station. There’s a highway that runs pretty much directly from there to my house.
No bus or cab to be found after I got off the Metro…proceeding to another location. Hoping good karma from directing another guy to Metro
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) February 13, 2014
Hahaha, no. I admit, there was a 10-minute period here where I basically just started walking down the snow-covered street not sure of what I was doing. During this time I directed two more people toward the Metro. Then I realized I had technology available to me, namely a little service called Uber. I tried several times to get a driver to accept me, but finally, Souhail said he would be there in 13 minutes to pick me up and end this ordeal.
I was one of about seven people at the station who were stranded without the buses. Everyone else was calling cab companies, and the response they all got was, “We’re not sending anyone out there until the roads are better.” Seven minutes into my 13-minute wait, I got a text saying Souhail had canceled. My cell battery was at 32 percent.
I tried again, and again it took several battery-sucking tries to get a driver to commit to me. Brian and his Honda Civic were coming in 10 minutes. He called right away, we set a pickup spot and everything was gravy. Until he called again not even two minutes later saying his car was stuck and he wasn’t coming. Cell battery 24 percent.
This time, it took many battery-sucking tries and re-loadings of the app to get a driver. This one was named Mohammed. He would be there in 24 minutes. I barely had time to read that before another text came in saying Mohammed had canceled. Cell battery 22 percent.
I told myself I would try one more time, then make a new plan. Uber hooked me up with Peter and his vehicle large enough that I had no doubt he would arrive. He was there in less than 10 minutes:
As we got close to my neighborhood, I told him he would probably have to drop me at the front since historically plowing is a pretty low priority. Even the large vehicle of salvation got only a few feet into the neighborhood before he stopped and I got out, dropping my cell phone and its 19 percent battery on the ground in the process. For everything that had happened on the way home, I was immediately validated in knowing that driving myself absolutely was not an option:
I could have taken a shower and gone to sleep happy at that point, but there was still the matter of the giant pile of snow on the front porch, sidewalk and all around my car. My roommate happened to be one his way out to start dealing with said snow, so we put in an epic tag-team effort to clear everything out. We also got a visit from a friendly plow truck:
After all of that extra effort, we decided we had earned a trip to Taco Bell. We piled into his larger car and made the quick journey down the street in search of magic to refuel us. Alas, we were met with only utter, heartbreaking sadness. A sign on the door said they were closed due to the weather. We settled for a nearby Chipotle and the hope that maybe, somehow, Taco Bell will be open for dinner.
And with that, 23 hours after I got up yesterday, I bid you good night. And by that I mean a three-hour power nap before dinner and flipping my schedule back to being a regular person for the weekend.
Happy snowy weekend.
On January 3, a magnificent creature rose from the fluffy, white, majestic surface of our back deck. His name was Lumpy The Snowman.
Using the materials we had on hand, Lumpy featured a tennis ball for a nose, sticks for his eyes, mouth and arms, and a plastic flower pot for his hat/helmet. We finished him while the snow was still falling, and in the morning, we awoke to this perfect extra layer on top of our work that made him seem so content with temperatures that would spend much of the day in the teens with wind chills sometimes below zero.
It was that cold, and another blast of cruel, arctic frigidness that helped Lumpy live for 12 days.
His nose fell off first, four days into his doomed life. I will admit that the one bit of photo staging I did with Lumpy was to roll the ball back over near his feet so that it could be featured in subsequent pictures. This is also when I started thinking about his eventual demise, and began taking regular shots in order to assemble a crude time-lapse.
You’re welcome:
Oh wait, the Internet is all about doing things in GIF form now? Fine:
So long, buddy.
[Note: The person who took the time to write an entire blog post about a snowman also made up a list of the time and temperature for each of these 20 pictures, but he is tired so they are not included in any way. Autographed copy available upon request.]
Mother Nature is capable of snarling even your best-laid plans.
Earlier this week, a snowstorm rolled through our area at the perfect time to make an apocalyptic scene of the evening rush hour. I had watched the forecast on the local news for days, and had a pretty good sense of just when the worst was supposed to hit.
That led to a plan to beat the snow, which actually just worked to put me right in the middle of the madness.
I normally drive to the Metro at about 8:30 p.m. in order to arrive at work sometime between 9:30 and 9:45. But the morning of the snow, every meteorologist said the worst of the snow was going to start between 4 and 5 p.m., and that we would get a total of about 3-5 inches of snow where I live.
With that information, my plan was simple — drive to the Metro parking garage at 3:30, nap there for a few hours, then take an early train into the city to grab a bite to eat before work.
I slept for a few hours, and woke up to check the latest forecast. In that time, the timeline for the worst of the snow had been moved up and the expected amount of snow had been doubled. Awesome.
As I walked out the door just before 3:30, traffic was moving smoothly on the road in front of our neighborhood and only a light sleet was falling from the sky. I felt encouraged and confident that my plan was going to turn out well.
Given the conditions, I skipped the small, windy road I usually take to the Metro, opting instead for a series of highways (Fairfax County Parkway, Route 50, Interstate 66) that I assumed would be in better shape. Unfortunately, so did everyone else, and the moment I got onto the Fairfax County Parkway, traffic came to a complete stop.
And then the snow started.
Having grown up in this area, I know it only takes a few flakes to turn normally insane drivers into something that resembles a herd of newborn giraffes trying to find their footing. Cars slide left and right off the road. A driver slams on the gas, sees that isn’t getting him anywhere and decides to just keep flooring it in hopes something magically changes. In short, it isn’t pretty.
The route I chose usually takes about 20 minutes to drive. In the ever-deteriorating conditions on this day, it took me six hours. The trip was 360 minutes of driving 10 feet, stopping for 10 minutes, driving seven feet, stopping for 15 minutes, dodging stalled cars, merging two lanes into one to get past the guy who couldn’t make it up the hill and watching as pedestrians easily out-walked even the fastest car.
In short, it was a nightmare. If it weren’t for a phone equipped with the Internet and an iPod packed with podcasts, I may have gone insane.
At about the two-hour mark, I had made it roughly four miles from my house. I was on a section of the Parkway that features a slight uphill. The slow pace of traffic was actually helping a lot of drivers — since we weren’t going more than two miles per hour, it was rarely necessary to touch the gas pedal. But some people missed the memo.
It was here that I had my only close call of the trip. A driver had managed to get his car sideways across both lanes about midway up the small hill. I watched, almost in a daze, as he repeatedly slammed on the accelerator, alternating between forward and reverse, in an attempt to get pointed in the right direction. The result was a lot of noise, and a car sliding uncontrollably sideways down the hill. A few times the car came within inches of my own, until thankfully there was enough of an opening for me to squeeze by safely.
A lot of drivers recognized their lack of ability to handle the conditions (or just became frustrated and gave up), abandoning their cars on the side of the road. Or sometimes in the middle of the road. As each piece of a mile went on, I had a rolling mental calculus going to consider my options. The range started at pull over and walk home, pull over and walk to my parents’ house, pull over and walk to the Metro, and of course pull over and start a dance-off in the middle of the snowy road. OK, maybe not the last one.
Strangely though, at no point did it occur to me to take a picture of the scene. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have the time. So to make up for my lack of photo evidence, please enjoy this photo from snowy Alaska featuring my aunt, grandfather and mom holding a group of fish:
Photo unrelated in any way to this story
The option I decided to pursue was basically, “I have gone this far, I might as well keep going.” As the hours and hours rolled on, I took solace in the small milestones: getting to the next intersection, passing another snowplow idling on the shoulder, seeing another police car dodge oncoming traffic instead of using our lanes. I can’t even describe my excitement when I actually exited onto a new road.
Of course, the entire time I was driving I became more and more sure that I was going to make it to the Metro, only to have them close down the above-ground portion of the system. That would include the station I was driving to, and supposedly happens when there is eight inches of snow.
Shortly before I arrived at the station, I checked Facebook from my phone. One of my contacts had posted something about Metro shutting down…the bus system. I only had a small heart attack when reading the first half of that sentence. Thankfully though, the train portion of my trip was entirely uneventful and I made it into work only half an hour after my shift started. My dinner plans shifted to what I could get out of a vending machine, but at least I was there.
On the way home the next morning, the carnage was really incredible. The roads were passable, but the huge collection of abandoned cars was quite a sight. I would estimate I passed at least 100 cars ditched in the snow, some of which were still sitting in the middle of a lane.
So I guess the lesson is here is that planning ahead is good, but planning ahead better is better. Oh, and sometimes the uneventful 20-minute drive is something to be celebrated.
Today I found out that the little I know about women’s figure skating is far more than I would like.
A conversation started innocently enough, with discussion of Brett Favre and the idea that it is sad he can’t end his career on the highest note. I said maybe we shouldn’t feel so bad about a guy who has millions of dollars and has already won a Super Bowl title.
Then I made the mistake of trying to argue by extension, asking if the other party felt the same way about Sasha Cohen not going out on top.
When the other person, a female, didn’t know anything about Sasha Cohen I naturally had to drop some knowledge. That led to the following facts coming out of my brain:
-Sasha Cohen was the silver medalist at the 2006 Olympics
-She ended up with silver after holding a big lead heading into her final skate, in which she fell
-Tara Lipinski won a gold medal in figure skating at age 14 (I looked this up, it’s 15)
-At age 25, Cohen was attempting a comeback and fell again at last weekend’s U.S. Championships
-People were referring to her as a “grandmother” in a sport populated by teenagers
I promised that knowledge did not make me as into figure skating as it sounds, but I don’t think the other party was convinced. But whatever. Sasha Cohen, like my friend Eli Manning, is unstoppable.
On a related note, how much are you allowed to enjoy seeing skaters wipe out on jumps? I had the aforementioned U.S. Championships on while I was reading and found it quite entertaining to watch someone go down. Once they fall, the rest of the routine is like watching a baby deer wobble around. And usually that leads to a second fall.
Speaking of cold things, the snow fort is officially dead. This morning I looked outside to find this:
You can see a little, tiny sliver of white in the leaf pile on the right. That is all the snow that remained. Unfortunately it rained some more and was pretty warm today, melting away the final piece of the greatest snow fort that ever was.
I first posted about the fort more than a month ago, with a full 38 days passing between the first snowflakes and today’s final melting.
R.I.P. Snow Fort.
A week ago my roommate and I spent a few hours playing 1080 Snowboarding on Nintendo 64. We were very much aware it was 2009 and not 1999, but it’s a fun game.
That was apparently the clincher for his girlfriend later remarking that we were acting more kid-like lately. So it should have been no surprise that just a few days later we went to Toys ‘R Us and purchased Nerf guns.
It was after that trip that we jokingly said next we’d be building forts, and well, look what happened.
Nerf guns are quite advanced these days, which fortunately supported our hypothesis about how far toys could come since our childhood. The model we selected (we got the same kind) has detachable parts that allow you to make anything from a handgun up to an assault rifle. It is also complete with a “laser” site that is quite enjoyable to use when trying to shoot your roommate in the dark.
The gloriousness of the modern Nerf gun
In fact, in our short experience with our toy weapons it is clear that everyone should own one. See a stuffed animal on the other side of the room? Blast it with a Nerf dart. Your roommate walks in after a long day at work? Shoot him as he flips through the mail. The fun is endless.
Maybe everyone should take a step back and recapture a piece of their childhood. Mad after a crappy day at work? Play some old-school MarioKart. Get dumped by your boyfriend? Tape his picture to the wall and hit it with a Nerf gun. Two feet of snow falls, dashing your weekend plans? Get out a sled (or make a sweet fort). The world is your candy cane (candy canes being far tastier than oysters).
The recliner in our family room has a great view of the TV, and is where I write most of these posts. It also looks out onto our back deck.
That last part is what leads to things like: “It’s going to snow like a mother. I bet I could use that patio furniture to make a cool snow fort.” When the forecast called for 16-22 inches in our area, I set to work arranging the pieces into a rudimentary frame.
With a table, two Adirondack chairs, four side tables and a pile of leaves, I came up with this:
This storm turned out to be one of the biggest snowfalls in my lifetime in the Washington, D.C., area. I was here in 1996 for a similar storm and remember making snow forts the hard way back then. The process involved making a huge pile of packed snow, and then digging out the inside for a sort of igloo effect.
While it was a good system, it took forever. It also had stability issues since in trying to maximize your interior space you have to make the walls thinner and thinner. Eventually that leads to disaster.
So in 2009, using a patio table as the roof seemed like a much better way to go. Initially I didn’t plan to do any construction once the snow started falling. But once there were 7-8 inches on the ground I decided to try to make a nice stable layer for the rest of the snow to sit on.
Here’s what it looked like just before I intervened:
A lot of snow had made it through the sides and into the fort, but I still had to add some more from the rest of the deck to get the walls solid. Fortunately, the snow packed pretty well and I was able to get it all closed up without too much trouble.
And then the snow kept falling. And kept falling. And kept falling. We ended up with about a foot and a half of the fluffy white stuff. By the time the sun was setting, the fort looked like this:
The photos don’t even do it justice — this thing takes up most of the deck. It’s almost laughable to glance outside and see how big it is.
And if it snows again this year, we have a lot more patio furniture sitting around and thus will have a much bigger fort. I bet we could make a sort of tunnel that reaches the back door.