adventures in commuting (or, omg snow!)
this morning i woke up before my alarm went off, looked out my window and giggled hysterically at the snow already settled and still falling in my backyard. oh my gosh! real snow in portland is a rare thing and very very exciting. so exciting, in fact, that i made an abrupt decision to bike to the theatre today. yeah i’ve been muttering for days about not wanting to ride in the rain, but snow is another thing altogether! i’d never biked in the snow before and i ride a skinny-tired road bike, so i gave myself over an hour and a half for a trip that usually takes me about 45 minutes. put on two pairs of socks, my rain pants and my ski jacket, and set hesitantly off.
i had a great time! snow turned to ice underneath my fenders and between my brakes and wheels, and i walked on the downhill sections ’cause i didn’t trust my brakes, but for the most part i did just fine. portland doesn’t know what the heck to do with snow, really, and even major arterial roads aren’t salted or plowed or anything like that, which just meant i didn’t have to deal with too many cars. i mostly rode in car tire tracks to avoid the aforementioned fender problem as much as possible. it’ll be back to raining in no time, i’m sure, or i would’ve dug out my multitool and pulled the darn things off.
(ladd circle, which looks a bit like the edge of narnia in the snow, doesn’t it?)
(the hawthorne bridge from waterfront park)
(waterfront park)
i got to the theatre not late but not really early, either, which i chalk up more to how many times i stopped to take photos and leisurely gawk than to the snow itself actually slowing me down.
and of course the show must go on, as they say! two performances today. during our dinner break in between, we walked to three different restaurants and a grocery store and found them all closed ’cause of the weather before we gave up and ate at the noodle place across the street from the theatre. then that place closed, too. oh portland.
getting home was at least as much of an adventure as getting there. the snow on the streets was pretty thoroughly packed into ice and biking on that (and at night!) was out of the question for me. i left my bike at the theatre. when i called trimet’s “transit tracker” line about the first of two buses i usually take home when i take the bus, they weren’t even giving estimated arrival times but were instead announcing the actual distance between the stop and the bus. when i called, the bus was more than 17 miles away. i didn’t think the end of the whole freakin’ route was that far away.
so i started walking. walking all the way home in the snow (seven miles or so) actually sounded pretty exciting, so when i got to another stop, at which a different bus that could take me partway home was due in twenty minutes or so, i decided to keep walking.
i made it across the hawthorne bridge before i got too cold. and then i got on a bus (the same one that i would’ve been on had i stopped at the second bus stop downtown–but the walk was worth it!). rode it east for a bit. got off again. called for arrival times for the next bus i had to take. “seventy-eight minutes,” the automated voice told me. i laughed aloud. started walking. giggled to myself a lot and tried not to slip on the icy sidewalks.
i was actually kind of disappointed when i glanced behind me and saw the bus approaching a mere fifteen or twenty minutes later, but that didn’t stop me running to catch it at the next stop.
made it home, cold, tired and happy, only about an hour and a half after i’d left the theatre.
