Snowbound
It was quite the adventure to get from Portland to California when we went to visit my family for Christmas. Needless to say, if you’ve been watching the news, Portland has been snowbound in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Another thing that you need to know about Portlanders, is that we don’t deal too well with snow. This is not for any lack of competence on our part, it’s just that we so rarely get snow, that we are often unprepared for dealing with ice and inclement weather. Our roads aren’t iced and there’s something like 5 snowplows for the entire metro area.
The first four days of snow were fun. Getting off of work early, spending time with my wife and dogs at home, drinking beer and watching movies. But even that gets old when you can’t leave the house. As we were stuck there, watching the news, we noticed that the Portland airport was starting to cancel flights. Knowing that we had to act immediately or risk not being able to leave the next morning, my wife made reservations for a hotel near the airport. Of course the streets were in no condition to drive in, nor was the bus line running that would have gotten us to our destination: the MAX station.
So what would any adventurous type do? Of course, my pregnant wife and I walked 2 miles in the snow to the MAX station with our luggage on our back. Taking the MAX line was fine until we got through Portland. The rail that went to the airport was frozen, so we had to stand outside for over an hour waiting for a bus to come pick us up. We crammed inside like some kind of Chinese commuter and made our way to the airport and eventually to our hotel.
Needless to say by the time we woke up that morning, our flight to California had been canceled. Regardless, we made our way to the airport where we proceeded to stand in line for three hours trying to get re-booked. Everyone that was in line before us were getting delaying until after Christmas. It looked like our Christmas plans were probably ruined.
Luckily enough we were able to get a flight to Las Vegas later that afternoon, the two remaining seats on that airplane (probably because some unlucky schmo couldn’t make it to the airport in the snow) and the only plane within eight hours of Southern California. No, Las Vegas is not California, but my family’s home is only a 3 1/2 hour drive, so after renting a rental car, that’s what we did. Not the finest day of travel we’ve ever had, but surprisingly not the worse.
My family was quite proud of our grand efforts in to join them for Christmas. We didn’t think it was too big of a deal, because we wanted to escape the snow in the Northwest anyway. And besides that is the last traveling that we’ll be doing for quite a long time I imagine, as we’ll soon have a baby to contend with and I certainly don’t want to drag a child along on this sort of adventure in the future.