We were let out of work 2 hours early yesterday and encouraged to leave earlier if needed to reach home safely because of the storm hanging over us. I didn’t wrap up and get all of my team out the door of our downtown Washington, DC building until 3:45pm. Things didn’t seem too bad at that point, honestly. The sidewalks and roads had a thin layer of slush, but everyone was moving.
I drive each day, parking in a garage downtown beneath a hotel and several restaurants. It took me 20 minutes to get out of the garage–not because of the snow, the exit gate was malfunctioning. It was a hint from the Fates that I ignored.
Most days I travel just after HOV on Route 66 has opened up. Route 66 is the most direct route from our cozy apartment in Fairfax into the heart of the city. It took me an hour to get out of downtown (a distance of about 1.2 miles, but a with lot of stoplights and a lot of tourist spots). That’s not unheard of when traffic gets nasty for an evening commute though. I hit a pivotal point on Theodore Roosevelt Bridge where I could take 66 and risk an HOV violation (an almost certainty) or take Route 50–a guaranteed slower path, but one without a hefty fine involved. I opted for Route 50, and got in a steadily moving line of cars that were starting to skid here or there on the thickening layers of slush.
I began my drive home with just slightly over a quarter of a tank of gas. This would usually last me 2.5 days of driving back and forth the 26 miles to work. My car isn’t a hybrid, but it’s pretty darned efficient even when dealing with DC stop-and-go commuting.
As is my habit, I had dialed home just before leaving the garage (once the possessed gate decided to release us from its clutches) to talk to Jer & check on The Boy. I always use a headset or go hands-free, and he and I chat about our workdays for as long as my commute lasts. It’s our adult conversation time, our time to vent and laugh and talk out the stresses or successes of the day. It’s the time during the hectic week when he has my mostly undivided attention (no blackberry, email, other phone calls, or Boy to compete with), and it’s just us talking and listening to each other.
Things started to really slow down just inside Arlington, VA. Jer began to pull up traffic reports and Google maps of the roads that lay ahead of me and injected bits of what he was seeing into our conversation. Somewhere after Washington Blvd, I realized we weren’t moving at all anymore. The slush was getting deeper, visibility lower.
Jer pulled up traffic cams along 50, telling me which points along the way he saw were clear and which points looked like they might be the source of the bottleneck. We knew it was clear (no traffic) at Carlin Springs about a mile from where I was by Jer’s estimation. I amused him with observations about the other drivers, the worsening conditions, and the periodic updates on the number of plows, salt & sand crews I had seen working on the roads so far.
Hours on road: 3 Plows seen working: 0
An hour later my count was up to zero and I had moved .3 miles (that’s right, 0.3 miles). The camera at Carlin Springs still showed it clear of cars. I was starting to get cranky, thirsty, and hungry. I regretted neglecting lunch and lamented leaving my half-full water bottle on my desk.
Another hour passed. Visibility was horrible. Streetlights were going out and coming back on randomly along the cross streets, casting eerie shadows on the intersections. More cars were struggling to move after each stop, sometimes dipping into the deeper snow on the shoulder before finding purchase.
My gas light came on.
For those of you unfamiliar with the stretch of 50 I’m talking about, there are very few gas options once you pass S. Glebe until you reach 7 corners. It’s mostly residential through there, and would require a lot of side-road navigation to get through to any pockets of convenience where I could refuel. I was in the left lane of 50, and had managed to crawl just past the exit to S. Glebe when the indicator lit. Jer spent the next 45 minutes rattling off every possible route to every gas station listed on Google Maps and using satellite imagery to try to gauge the grade of the exit ramps, driveways, and connecting roads that could get me to each one.
I crawled forward for another hour, anxiety building as I passed cars unable to move through several inches of heavy snow. My gauge continued to dip lower and lower, the sliver of black space between red line and red needle getting smaller and smaller. Still no plows, sand or salt.
Out loud to Jer, I took stock of everything useful I had in the car with me: high rubber boots (left on the floor of the backseat from the last snow storm), thick winter gloves, long coat, blanket, umbrella, etc. I tried to prepare myself for the fact that I wasn’t going to make it to the gas station without quite saying that out loud to him. I plugged my cell phone in to the car charger.
“You’re going to make it,” he said.
“We’ll see.”
During that painful hour+ that I watched the gas gauge and tried not to think about how cold it would be walking in this mess my nerves began to fray a bit. I started ranting about how much I hated Route 50 with its stupid hills and valleys peppered at the top, middle, and bottom with poorly timed stoplights. The long snake of traffic I rolled with skidded down hills attempting to stop for changing lights only to sit and stare at empty crossing roads. The lights meant nothing, but we all tried to obey them.
At one point, a city bus in the oncoming lanes slid to a halt on the east-bound side of 50 next to us. A matching bus in the left lane on our side swerved into the oncoming lane and skidded/slid into position behind the other bus. The drivers got out and stood in the middle of 50, talking and pointing wildly. It took 15 minutes for the cars in front of me–the ones who had been behind the second bus–to get started moving again. I narrated it all to Jer. People began to honk.
I reached Carlin Springs. Jer and I had a mini celebration at the milestone, even though it was no longer free of traffic. I took a picture of the unplowed roads with my camera phone while I sat waiting for things to move. He launched into a list of my gas station options again as I inched across the overpass and got my first look at the road ahead.
“I think there’s something in the road, but I can’t tell what… a bus? Yes. A bus… It’s blocking two or all of our lanes.”
I stayed in line, crawling toward the bus with its flashers on, my progress marred by long periods of not moving at all and breathless moments where I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to start moving again. Jer and I debated which gas station I might be able to actually reach given that the side roads and parking lots were in worse condition than 50 and many of them had at least 2 stalled cars blocking them. The closest gas station to me was the Exxon at Patrick Henry, but the path to it was a steep exit ramp on the right. Jer wanted me to go for it. I was terrified of getting stuck; I knew it wouldn’t be clear.
The bus was blocking 2.5 of our 3 lanes, sprawling diagonally across the road. Stalled cars on both sides of the bus made going around it even scarier; the possibility of getting stuck or sliding into one of them seemed very high.
After that point, we started to move more consistently. Jer and I continued to strategize about reaching a gas station. I made the move into the right lane for the first time in hours, following the lead of the guy in front of me. We thought this was probably the best thing to do because of my lack of gas, even though the snow and ice were much, much worse on that side of the road. It felt a bit like admitting defeat.
I continued to narrate what I was seeing to him over the phone, he talked to me about dinner for The Boy, I listened to them going through the regular evening routine without me. Jer made pasta salad and cheeseburgers.
The car in front of me that I had been following for miles and hours suddenly pulled off to the far right of the road and stopped in the deep snow. I watched his headlights appear in my rearview mirror as I continued to inch past him. I said a quick prayer that he’d be alright, feeling somehow connected to him from the hours of staring at his license plate and bumper stickers for so long. I tacked on a quick prayer that I’d make it to the gas station. I didn’t tell Jer about him, even when his headlights suddenly went out and left everything a little darker.
I crested the hill a while later, a little momentum building as I reached the top and rounded a corner. It was the first time I had shifted into 2nd gear in what seemed like forever. Lighted signs, street lights and proof of civilization blazed up around me.
“I’m at Target,” I whispered, interrupting his stream of traffic cam reports.
“What?!” Jer said, suddenly alert.
“I. AM. AT. TARGET!” I exclaimed loudly this time.
“You are?! There’s a driveway coming up soon… a hill to your right! It starts out slow and then gets steeper towards the top. It should lead you into a parking lot with lots of shops and things Can you take it?”
“I’m on it,” I said breathlessly. ”I made it up,” a second later. Having recognized the ramp for what it was before he could even get out his explaination, I took advantage of my car’s new-found momentum and had darted up the ramp.
“You should be able to make it, but it might be steep… just be patient, see if if you can take it though.” He continued, not realizing what I had said.
“I’m up it. I made it.” I said again, “I see the gas station!”
He laughed and cheered.
There was a tree blocking the outer road to the gas station, so I zigged and zagged through a strip mall parking lot, Jer urging me to be careful in case the lots weren’t connected, but I went a bit faster. In my mind getting to the gas station was proof that I would be OK, that I would make it home and I HAD to get there as quickly as second gear would allow. My hair was drenched from the heavy wet snowflakes by the time I was done pumping my gas, but I didn’t care. I was literally bouncing up and down and chattering to him like an excited child while I watched the numbers (and money) tick away on the pump.
“There’s a Popeyes chicken there,” Jer told me when I finally paused for breath. ”I want you to drive there and get some food and something to drink.” It was 8:36pm.
“I see it. I’ll move my car from the pump and walk. The parking lot is too strewn with cars.” He stayed on the phone with me the whole time.
At the entrance to Popeyes, a man was going through his pockets and putting on gloves.
“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” He said, smiling at me.
I smiled back and nodded, still gas-station giddy.
“I think I’ll sunbathe later, how about you?” he continued as I opened the door and went in. I laughed and he followed me in.
He continued to babble while I ordered food and occasionally murmured a response to Jer in my headset. He was looking at the roads around me and their traffic reports, trying to figure out which route I should take from this point–I actually had choices now.
“I have two blocks more to go!” the man said to me suddenly, loudly.
I nodded.
“I heard it’s going to snow today,” he whispered to me and winked.
I nodded again, smiling tightly and pointing at my headset, hoping he’d understand I was on a call.
He laughed at his own joke (or possibly something I couldn’t hear) and said loudly “Who do they think they’re going to sell all that chicken to? They should give it to us at a discount. We’re keeping them from throwing it away!”
The woman behind the counter suddenly looked nervous and motioned to a guy in the kitchen. He joined her at the counter, a wide smile on his face.
The strange man started telling the smiling worker about his remaining two blocks. I took a few steps back to wait for my order and looked around at the handful of other people in the restaurant. I could see more cars pulling into the gas station, drivers pumping gas and passengers making their way across the parking lot to Popeyes. I thought I could feel the waves of relief coming off of each one that pulled up.
I chattered between bites of chicken and sips of coke while I sat at the Patrick Henry and Rte 50 light, waiting to turn back onto 50. There was a long line of us waiting to make the turn, so I mostly got about 20 minutes to just sit and eat and giggle and gush and babble about how I didn’t think I was going to make it. Jer told me he thought I should try to take Rte 7 northwest to 66 instead of staying on 50. He said that 66 was moving consistently, but not quickly, and 7 West didn’t slow down until close to 66. We debated the condition of Rte 7–neither of us knew, but we debated possibilities all the same.
Then I debated the steepness and condition of the exit ramp from 50 onto Rte 7, and he swore it wasn’t steep from the 2-3 year old satellite photos he could see online.
I decided it was worth a chance and eased into the exit lane behind a large white box van. Each time the stop-and-go traffic stopped, the driver would hop out of the van, run around to the back and use a long “industrial strength” ice scraper to scrape the snow, ice, and slush out from behind his back tires. Then he’d hop back in the van, wait for traffic to move again, roll the van backwards into the two cleared spots and get the van moving forward.
His routine became sort of hypnotizing. And the double-bump I got from driving through the man-made potholes in the ice became a comforting beat for another 15 or 20 minutes while we negotiated the exit to Rte 7.
Midway up the ramp, my friend in the white van became hopelessly stuck. I carefully squeezed around him and slip-slided on up the ramp toward the stoplight at the top.
Two cars ahead of me, a blue 4-door of some kind suddenly turned sideways, as if the backend disagreed with the direction the front end was taking. Its brake lights flared brightly after a moment or two of spinning wheels and flinging slush. A tall, thin man exploded out of the driver’s side door, screaming expletives. He ripped the hat from his head and threw it in the snow at his feet, jumping up and down a couple of times before charging off into the deeper snow toward nothing in particular. He pumped his arms at the sky and continued to scream. I narrated the scene to Jer as it unfolded in front of me.
The entire line of cars hesitated a few brief seconds during and after his outburst. Then we finished climbing the exit, none of us able to stop at the stoplight at the top, all of us sliding right through to where the exit split east and west.
Only one of the cars I could see in front of me went west. He and I moved along at a speedy 15 miles an hour until we reached the light at 29. There were suddenly a LOT more cars, and we melted into them, slowing down to match their pace.
It was after 9pm now, and my exuberance was wearing off.
“Hey, what movies do we own that are just laugh-out-loud funny to you?” Jer suddenly asked in my ear.
“Wh-what?” I stammered, caught off guard by his non-sequitur. I must have fallen silent, lost in my own thoughts because I suddenly couldn’t remember how long it had been since I had spoken.
“Do we own anything that is just non-stop, laugh-out-loud-funny to you?”
“Um… Galaxy Quest,” I said, recognizing the lifeline he was throwing me. I needed to stay alert and engaged–no spacing off or giving up.
Just before 9:30, in the middle of our movie quoting-and-laughing, all the lights in the stores, signs and street lamps went dark around me. They flickered alive, then dark, alive, then dark before coming back on and staying on. We stopped moving completely. I fidgeted restlessly and got angry at the tailgating taxi cab in the lane next to me. He was terrifying the woman in front of him by weaving and sliding in his lane and nearly hitting her each time we rolled forward. I could see her wide, scared eyes illuminated by his headlights each time she looked into her rear-view mirror to keep an eye on him. When we continued to sit within the same city block until after the 10pm mark, Jer started talking to me about upcoming side streets to try that would take me closer to the entrance to 66. I didn’t realize how much I hoped one of them would work until I approached the first through-street option and saw it littered with abandoned cars.
I told him I didn’t want to try a side street. I would just stick it out and wait. A police car whooped somewhere behind me, its lights barely visible through the mess of cars in my mirror, before it turned and disappeared into one of the clogged side streets. We started rolling forward again.
“Two plows just went by,” I told him, “But they’re going in the opposite direction and their blades weren’t down.”
Trees, buses, cabs, and stalled cars caused hours of delays.
Eventually everyone in my lane (the right lane) suddenly switched to the left lane. I followed and we came to a halt again beside the giant tree that had fallen in the road. I took a photo with my phone and watched the minutes tick by. Jer started an amazon wish list of movies we used to own on VHS that we should buy on DVD. I listened to him talk about the pricing, options, and reviews of each one, sometimes weighing in on which collectors edition I wanted or suddenly remembering other movies to add.
“I’m tired,” I said for the first time.
“I know,” he said, “66 is still moving from what I see. I think it might only take you 25 minutes to get home once you get to 66.”
“Okay,” I said, afraid to hope too much.
“I feel really guilty about all this.”
“What?” I said, confused. “Why?! You’re keeping me sane.”
“I stayed home with The Boy today… you went in to work. I would have gotten out of work earlier than you did. I would have made it home easier and more quickly from where I work. You wouldn’t be out there. There’s nothing I can do.”
“We made the choice together,” I reminded. “I had to go in. You’re getting me home safe. You’re staying with me. I’m at West Street.”
“Hey! There you go! After that is Haycock… HAYcock… hayCOCK…” He giggled to himself a bit.
“Is that what that road is named? I didn’t know that. I thought it was a number…”
“You know what comes after Haycock?”
“What?” I said, knowing the answer already.
“66…”
I smiled like crazy.
My second wave of giddiness hit around 11pm when I finally started up the ramp to 66 and knew I was going to make it with ease. I was terrified of the ramp after I watched an SUV come off the exit ramp sideways, his wheels turning from side to side futilely without rotating.
I merged onto the only clear area on 66 and fell in behind a guy in a red Scion. We were alone on the road.
“It’s a mess,” I said to Jer. “But there’s one mostly clear lane and we’re doing about 35! I’m actually in THIRD gear! I don’t think they’ve plowed.”
He listened to me babble for a while, narrating the chaos I was seeing. Plow trucks came on to the highway next to me and plowed ahead of us on the right. The Scion and I dropped in behind them, going more slowly. We got to follow them until the construction area before the 495 loop. There they pulled off to the side of the road and stopped.
“They’ve left us,” I said, disgusted. ”But that’s fine. Me and this dude in the Scion will just keep going!”
He chuckled in my ear and I kept smiling. I described the chaos of cops and plows working furiously to clear the end of the entrance ramp onto 66 from 495 north. Haphazard plowing of that area of 66 had built a wall of snow at the end of the entrance ramp, making it completely impassable.
Near the Nutley Street exit the dude and I came to a brief stop. The road was littered with abandoned vehicles and unplowed mounds of snow. People leaving the metro, parking, including a road-side assist truck, were skidding around, their lane uncleared.
Passing 123, I started to joke about the patchwork of plowing that had been done.
“I think they’re making a message in morse code or something. The stalled cars are the dots, the plowed patches the dashes. You can only see it from the sky though, so I can’t read it.”
Jer laughed.
“Or they’ve made a game of it. This pass, you can only plow the last 1/4 of the odd numbered mile markers…”
At the exit for 50 on 66, traffic was backed up in the exit lanes heading west. At the entrance ramp onto 66 from 50, I watched a silver minivan crash into the wall of snow a plow had created (musta been an odd 1/4). I continued to narrate for Jer. The roadside assist truck that had been lagging behind me made his way to the side of the road, probably going back to make sure they were OK.
Rush hour was delayed until midnight on 66.
At the HOV-only Monument Drive exit, Scion dude and I met complete gridlock. Since this portion of the road wasn’t plowed yet (evens!), there were no consistent lanes or organization to the traffic. I was roughly one lane to the right of Scion dude, and he quickly disappeared into the tangle of cars. I said goodbye to him out loud, announcing “I must exit soon and he’ll go where ever Scion dudes live–probably Manassas.”
I moved all the way to the right, not knowing if it was a lane, a shoulder, or certain doom and hoped I’d reach the exit soon.
“I’m tired,” I said again when we were at a standstill. ”Rush hour was delayed until midnight, apparently.”
“You’re almost home,” Jer said softly. ”Are you on the exit yet?”
“No… I’m a mile away. We’re not moving.”
“I’m tired.” I said again.
“I know.”
Walmart truck blocking part of 66.
The messy clot of cars inched forward chaotically–skidding, sliding, starting, stopping. An emergency vehicle–fire, I think–came through at one point, forcing all of us who had carefully made our way to the right to slip and slide left in order to let him pass. More and more cars were littering the side of the road, some out so far into the road that our makeshift lanes all had to shift around them to the left or right. Another hour passed, and around 12:40 I reached the first major roadblock to my exit: a parked Walmart truck.
The snow in this area was deep and piled into unplowed mounds. Some cars skidded to a halt around the stopped truck and we had to work our way left again to get around all of them. I snapped a photo while I sat in line waiting for my chance to merge left.
Just past the Walmart truck we all moved right again; it was obvious who needed the 7100 exit. We were trying to cling to the right edge of the road in spite of the all the cars, dangerous snow, and Walmart obstructions.
Schools for Thursday were canceled, so The Boy had stayed up late hoping to see me. I said goodnight to him over the phone and reassured him that I’d be there when he woke up.
When we stopped moving again just after 1am, Jer began to lose patience and I was getting depressed.
“Do you want me to put on shoes and walk out to where you are to see what is going on? To see what is stopping you?” He asked.
“No. I’ll just wait.”
“I could walk this distance faster!”
“I know. Just wait. It’s a mess.”
Within a half mile of the exit, I started to see the second obstacle to my exit: the exit itself had become a parking lot. We settled into a maddening pattern of rolling a few feet, then sitting a few minutes. Wash, rinse, repeat. At each set of abandoned cars, including the first one with the cop serving as a warning to avoid the whole right-hand side of the road. I took a photo while I talked about random things with Jer and watched the the minutes on the clock pass.
I wasn’t the only one who thought to document what we were seeing. The person behind me blinded me with their flash a couple of times when it hit my rearview mirror. I told Jer that it looked post-apocalyptic, that it was eerie the way the vehicles were just abandoned wherever they stopped.
Cop steering us away from a long trail of abandoned vehicles on 66.
Abandoned cars took up the right side of the road just before the 7100 exit ramp off of 66.
As the exit actually started to break away from the highway, we came to another standstill. A bus tried to go around an abandoned vehicle that was smack in the middle of the exit and ended up sideways across all lanes. The rear end of the bus hung into the ditch on the left, his front disappeared behind the cars in front of me on the right.
We sat there for a long time without moving an inch, and I wondered out loud if I was going to have to park on the side of the road and walk the last .2 miles.
A metro bus blocked the 7100 exit after trying to maneuver around abandoned cars.
We suddenly rolled forward a few car lengths before coming to a halt again. After another 10 minutes or so of not moving, a man went sprinting by my passenger window. Another pulled his SUV up beside my car in the deeper snow and hopped out, also running forward. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I assume a car got stuck as it tried to go through the deep snow on the front (right) side of the bus. We started moving again, holding back patiently and waiting as the car trying to get through the narrow passage slipped and skidded through, sometimes with some pushing help. I took one last picture of the bus while I waited for my turn to go through the small opening. My hands were shaking.
I waited for the car in front of me to make it safely through the deep snow and around the bus before it was my turn.
Once past the bus things didn’t improve. A handicap access Metro van with passengers on board jutted out of the ditch to the right, I could see a driver with a phone or radio to his ear in the driver’s seat when my headlights hit it.
Cars littered the right side of the road, some facing backwards, some partially in the cleared lane we were trying to use.
We resumed our inch-worm pace, coming to a complete stop at the bottom of the ramp where we were supposed to merge onto 7100. The entire area was clogged with abandoned cars, and we were back to stop-and-go with an emphasis on the stopping part.
Cars at the end of the exit made merging onto 7100 nearly impossible.
Some owners were sitting in their cars with lights on, but most were abandoned.
Reaching 7100, it was obvious it hadn’t been plowed. I gripped the wheel with both hands, negotiating between stopped cars, piles of snow, slick spots and skidding motorists. The lanes across the median from mine were the same–cars abandoned where they stopped, even if it was right in the middle of the road. I continued to narrate what I saw to Jer.
A couple of stoplights later, I was laughing with relief and turning into home. After I parked, Jer and I hung up, and I all but ran across the courtyard using up the last bit of energy I had to get inside the door.
It took almost 10 hours, but at 1:40am I was home.
Filed under: Stuff, The Opposite of Genius
