You know what sucks? A two-and-a-half hour “bus and on foot odyssey” through snow-screwed Portland just to make it from Northeast Portland to WW Headquarters in Northwest.
You know what’s awesome? Sharing snowflaked horror stories about your two-and-a-half hour “bus and on foot odyssey” and other other tall tales of SNOWPOCALYPSE 2008 with your numb-fingered co-workers. Here’s what I’ve gathered just from WW inter-office emails this afternoon. Feel free to add your own SNOWPOCALYPSE 2008 trials and tribulations in comments:
- The #15 bus headed down Sandy Boulevard to downtown confused every single rider because it sported the sign “Powell Garage” above the outer front windows. Turns out the bus’ overhead outside sign had actually frozen and the driver hadn’t been able to change destination names for hours. She just opened the doors and shouted “DOWNTOWN!!!!” at every stop and let the frozen lemmings pile on.
- I hitchhiked to work. A nice-looking criminal defense lawyer named Eric Hale picked me up in his brand-new Volvo SUV on E. Burnside near 28th. I told him it’s really hard to get away with murder these days, so he shouldn’t even try it. And if he does murder me, Willamette Week might not come out and people would notice…
- I’m watching my poor dogs trying to poop in snow up to their stomachs.
- I waited about 45 minutes to catch the #15, and someone at the bus stop at 28th and Belmont told me that an earlier bus got stuck on the short hill up 25th and Belmont that leads to Morrison. Getting over to the Westside was fine but then the bus got stuck at the corner of 23rd and Burnside. Two other buses and a car were stuck, and traffic was backed up like five blocks down Burnside. Cars were honking. I just walked the rest of the way.
- I’ve heard a couple stories about people (no, I was not one of them) who put their chains on the wrong set of wheels—i.e., rear wheels when they have front-wheel-drive and vice versa—only to have their error pointed out to them by people helping push them out of the road.
- People waited 45 minutes for the The MLK #6 line at NE Ainsworth on Monday morning, at which point a tow-truck driver stopped by to inform them that the bus had “fallen into a ditch.” When the bus arrived 45 minutes later, it was so packed that half the waiting commuters had to be turned away.
Stay safe everybody. Visit TriMet for latest bus, MAX and Portland Streetcar info. And by “info,” I mean problems, closures and acts of god.
Image: This ice-laden tree came down across Northeast Mason Street, missing the car on the right by only a few feet. 
Yesterday and today it was hike around the neighborhood but previous days I took the bus with my 10 year old son. As folks were huddling in the bus stop wondering if the bus was coming, he’s throwing himself in the snow and making angels,having the time of his life, unaware of the deadlines and stress of the adults~ Kids are having the best winter ever and adults are going nuts!
Snow at PDX made me pout.
Not everything about snowpocalypse was bad. My kid’s 2 week winter break was turned into a 3 week break.
It was the best thing that ever happened in my life. I was snowed in at a Hostel and fell in love
sorry some people had shit for it, but I for one enjoyed my first kiss as that snow was falling around us.