It's Backwards World!!

We left the midwest on a warm, rainy late November day (it was in the high '50s the whole time we were home and was wonderful!) but we arrived in Seattle to SNOW and ICE and FREEZING weather. Fortunately we are from the midwest, so we had coats and gloves and good shoes on. Many people at the airport weren't so lucky - a flight arrived from Hawaii at the same time as ours and we saw people outside waiting for shuttles wearing flip-flops, wrapped up in beach towels and huddling together.

Even though our flight arrived at midnight (after a twenty minute delay), we could see how bad the traffic was from the plane - and they ANNOUNCED how bad the roads were on the plane as we were landing. Apparently traffic in Seattle had been gridlocked all day, the airport parking lot was treacherous, the wait for taxis was rumored to be four hours long, and shuttles and buses were getting stuck and weren't showing up. We had parked at a nearby park-n-ride lot and got very lucky catching a shuttle out there, which was the one shuttle still running for that lot (the other two were stuck en route). We sat in traffic trying to get out of the airport area and onto the freeway for about an hour (even though it was less than a half a mile away) and finally rerouted to a highway that we had heard was really slick but had light traffic. It turned out to be fine. I think the Seattle definition of "slick" is very different from ours (although the hills here really change the definition of "slick" too). We finally got home at 3 am.

The city is still shut down today - schools and daycares are closed, buses are running on a reduced route, and we slept in. I am going to venture out and see whether the sidewalks have been salted. It doesn't look bad though.

More reports from Thanksgiving, including a detailed overview of the high school reunion, will be coming shortly.