|
Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Tue, 23 Dec 2008For Christmas this year, I determined to visit family, as I do most years. Months ago, I scheduled myself an Amtrak seat, which would get me to Portland in time for a recital my mom was participating in. Things got a little crazy when I realized that I was closing the Judy Garland Christmas Special at Open Circle on the 20th, and planning on getting on a 9:45 am train on the 21st. Closing a show is many things, but it cannot be described as "early." I would surely be out until late on the 20th, quite possibly late enough that it would make more sense to just stay up rather than trying to get any sleep before I had to leave for the train. This was complicated, of course, by the fact that mother nature and global warming delivered a devastating one-two punch in the form of a dramatic series of storms that dropped over a foot of snow on the Seattle area, and kept temperatures below (at times well below) freezing for more than a week. Normal Seattle snow goes like this:
There was a big storm scheduled to roll in on Saturday night, and finally around 4 pm, Ron called me and said we should probably call off the show. It was a sad thing to cancel for closing night, but it was the right choice. Of course, I received this phone call while biking around Green Lake on my way to the theater, my nose nearing frostbite, breathing in sharp crystals of dihydrogen oxide, studded snow tires whirring over packed snow. What wasn't sad, though, was that suddenly taking a train in the morning didn't seem anywhere near so daunting. Liz came up to join me (having her own bus fiasco that consumed several hours and involved three different modes of transport) for the evening, and I planned out my departure for the morning. Orange Cab, bless their incompetent, overworked little hearts, told me that I couldn't possibly schedule a cab in advance (as I talked to them on Saturday night) due to the incoming weather, and that I should call an hour before I wanted to be picked up. Ok, thought I, I love getting up tremendously early. I'd give them a call, but plan on taking the bus down to the train station, since the cabs I'd seen had been pretty sparse. It was a 9:45 train, and I wanted to be there about an hour early, just in case. It's normally a 35 minute bus ride to the station, but I figured leaving an hour for the bus was about right, making my departure time around 7:30. Only, I miscalculated the night before, and decided that I needed to be pounding pavement (which is to say, trudging through packed snow) at 6:30. So that meant a 5:30 wakeup time. Arg. But I could do it. We set an alarm and went to sleep. 5:30 rolled around, and I got up. First, call the cab company. "Hi, I'm calling to see if I can get a cab up near Northgate around 7:30?" "I'm sorry sir," said the scheduling drone, obvious contempt dripping from her voice, "we have a one to four hour wait time right now." Right. Bus it is, thanks. So, Liz and I were ready to trudge out into the swirling white stuff. Just before I shut off the computer, I loaded up the Amtrak website again, and checked the status of the train one last time. It seemed improbable that it would leave on time, and sure enough, the 9:45 departure was suddenly pushed back to 2:45. Hallelujah! I called the Amtrak phone droid ("Hi, I'm Julie, your automated ticketing agent!") and confirmed the time, then we went back to bed. Ah, sleep. We finally got the show on the road around 12:30, and after one bus passed by the stop without even slowing, we boarded a bus headed for downtown. We arrived at the station around 1:30, and Liz loaded up the Amtrak site on her iPhone, to discover that the departure time was now scheduled for 4:30. Grand. Oh well, it was still running -- there was a hand-scrawled sign on the door of the station saying that every train except mine had been cancelled due to weather. Liz and I sat in the station, trading stories, watching videos on her phone, and generally enjoying ourselves until about 6:30. The departure time kept changing, and by this point, it was no longer even listed on the website, but they'd announced that we should try to be back by 9 pm if we wanted to go explore the night life around Pioneer Square. Liz reluctantly left at this point, to go home and feed her poor neglected kitty cat, and I settled down with a book. Some time before Liz departed, an announcement came over the PA that Amtrak would be providing sustenance, in the form of Subway sandwiches, to ticketed customers. Someone sitting across from us stood up, and shouted, "How about pizza?" There was a bit of repartee between the pizza shouter and the announcer, and that seemed to break the ice a bit. After Liz left, and I'd occupied myself with a book for a while, I realized that something was happening. The guy who'd shouted about the pizza was juggling. He'd already trekked out with several other hearty souls to a nearby grocery store, spent a surprising amount of his own money, and brought back food when it appeared that the provided sandwiches would only be enough for the sleeper-car customers, and not for us coarse and vulgar coach customers. He was now juggling oranges. There was someone else up there with him, trying to teach him to juggle while passing. She was an actor, and announced in a clear voice that we should all go see the next production at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, as she was juggling oranges with a complete stranger. This juggling performance (each person chanting "self-self-pass!") elicited cheers, applause, groans and laughter from the rest of the crowd, and AJ (the aforementioned pizza shouter and food requisitioner) turned out to be quite willing to make a spectacle of himself, as he demonstrated why it takes jugglers years and not minutes to perfect their craft. He was extremely good-humored about it though, and by the time they'd finished (having split two oranges open, and rapidly running out of fruit to juggle) everyone seemed to have been cemented in a good mood. Next thing I knew, all sorts of cellphones were out, and people were taking random pictures of each other. AJ would run to different groups of people, and take pictures of himself with them. He sat down next to me and took a picture. I couldn't resist, so I pulled out my camera, and took a picture too. He was, it turned out, an actor who was now living in Vancouver BC, and was travelling with his wife down to California. Someone across the aisle from us held up his device and had us posing for a few seconds before he broke up laughing -- he was holding an iPod, no camera involved. I quickly became entranced with something Aleah (spelling probably wildly inaccurate) was doing -- her phone included a camera mode where it would stitch together three images to make a panoramic shot. She and AJ were working out pictures where he would appear to be fighting himself, or kissing himself, etc. They staged one where he was tossing an orange to himself. I ended up stepping up as the cameraman and trying to get some more cool panoramic stitch shots going. AJ was game for this, and we got him fighting himself with Aleah mediating between the two aggressors, one of him exiting and entering two different doors, and one where he was flirting with himself. I may have to play with stitched shots like that, it was a lot of fun. During all this time, we'd occasionally hear new announcements from the Amtrak staff about when the train might be arriving. First it was "be back at 9," then it was "the train might be leaving the yard at 11:40," then it was 1 am, and so on. I found I didn't care much, because I was having a good time with these delightfully crazy people. I pulled out a pack of cards I've had knocking around in my bag for ages, and taught a group how to play Hosenabe, which game went on for a surprisingly long time, with most everyone in play until the very end, when three people lost at once with 30 points each (the winner had three of a kind, for thirty-and-a-half points). This attracted onlookers, and, more importantly, passed nearly an hour. Around eleven, after the Hosenabe game finished up, Aleah (who had been to see the Pajama Men at Annex the night before, because it's a tiny tiny world) had been ready to start a game of Werewolf (aka Mafia, aka Vampire, etc.), a party game I've never played but have heard of several times. Unfortunately, most people seemed to have run out of energy, and we were doing a lot more sitting down, and a lot less running around. She ended up sitting down next to me and talking for a while about relationship things: "So, now that I've known you for nine hours..." I think the additional bond of theater (she's an actor) and having seen me with Liz (thus: I'm "safe") helped, and we had an interesting but probably not terribly useful conversation about past relationships and what we learned. Of course, the train kept getting later and later. There was a flurry of activity as the conductors came out and might have been setting up to give car assignments. People flocked to get in line for their assignments, and ended up standing (then sitting, then lying) there for over an hour before the first assignment was given out. It was past midnight at this point. I took several too-dark pictures of people lined up with the big wall clock conspicuously in the background reading out 2:20 or 3:10 or whatever. There was a cheer that went up around 7:30, for the train (which had been sitting outside the station) pulled out. They'd announced that the big delay was that they had to get the train down to some yard south of town, where it would be "commissioned." This seemed to include turning cars around, stocking the dining car, safety checks, etc. It was suggested that this commissioning process might take an hour or two, and was the majority of the delay. We didn't see the train again until about 2 in the morning. Apparently the cold was severely complicating the process. AJ's food had long ago disappeared (and I hope that he was reimbursed for all of it, but I wasn't keeping close track -- I think I paid $10 for a handful of cookies and some chips, but it was the spirit of the thing that I approved of). The sandwiches were a memory. The vending machines, overpriced though they were, were empty. Of course, it was a baleful, snowy night outside, and most of the area restaurants were closed or had never opened. Aleah and someone else had wandered out in search of a bar around 8, but apparently it was clear that the city was shut down, and they returned, empty-handed and sober. By 2 am, there was considerably more horizontality in the station. People were stretched out on benches, and even on the very dirty floor. I wasn't that sleepy (having had my morning nap thanks to that well-timed check of the train status), so I was still up. Finally, around 3:00, the doors were thrown wide, and we started our zombie shuffle-march to the waiting train. I was up the stairs and in an actual train seat by 3:10, and around 3:20, the train actually moved! I sent a text message to Liz (who was still awake and following my plight with considerable concern) at 3:20, then immediately had to send a follow-up saying, "Oops, false hope again -- they had to move the train to water the cars." Just before 3:40, the train lurched forward, and failed to stop for the next watering point, and I realized that we were actually off. I sent a final text, and curled up most uncomfortably on the seat that didn't quite recline to horizontal. I slept, eventually, but woke up every hour or so. At 6:15, I called my parents, to alert them that I'd be arriving in two hours (theoretically). I didn't have anyone's word on this, I was just guessing. I awoke again to find that dawn had broken, and there was light to be seen out the window. I stumbled down towards the cars where I suspected there might be food, and passed Aleah, stopping to talk for a minute. She directed me to the cafe car, and I made it down the narrow stairway to discover the cafe itself closed, but a group of Safeway doughnut boxes scattered about a table. "Free doughnuts, I guess," quoth I to no one in particular, and grabbed one -- it was bland and flavorless, but better than nothing at all. Having returned to my seat (after washing my hands of the sickly sticky remnants of the doughnut), and ended up trailing Aleah to where AJ and Jennifer (his wife) were sitting. We passed the time until we reached Portland there, Aleah and I squeezing out of the aisle each time someone wanted to get past. Finally, right around 10 am, the train came to a stop at the Portland station, and I got off. AJ, Jennifer and Aleah were outside smoking, and I took a few final pictures before bidding them farewell. They definitely made the trip more enjoyable, and I'm hopeful that through the miracle of Web two-point-oh, we might actually keep in touch. It sounds like AJ would enjoy coming down to Seattle to see shows, and I'll certainly have shows to invite him to. Aleah, coming from Albequerque, might have a harder time making an evening trip to Seattle, but you never know. Of course, this was only the end of one leg of the journey: I still had to return to my parents' house, which is located in Scappoose, 30 miles from Portland, and up a very steep and winding road, in a foot and a half of snow. I met my dad in the station, and we started off. The roads were covered in packed snow, and the only time I saw anything like pavement, it was a manhole cover, presumably heated by whatever substance was passing beneath. The drive to Scappoose was very slow, owing to the tire chains, which would start to slap against the car most distressingly if we went over about 23 MPH. But we got there eventually. The trip up the hill was exciting, as even with four wheel drive and chains on the rear tires (the owner's manual says not to chain the front tires, since it's possible to damage drivetrain stuff if you do), we were sliding to and fro, spinning tires, and generally driving in a way which doesn't inspire supreme confidence. Particularly driving, as we were, with a sheer drop-off on one side of the road at times. Good times! But we made it back to the house without any real problems. At this point, the memories become pretty hazy. I suspect we ate something (I know I was hungry after my doughnut several hours earlier). I think I checked my email. I know that around 3 o'clock, I took a nap that didn't end until it was dark outside, and dinner was nearly ready. The nap, combined with the surreal night the previous day, combined to give me only the fuzziest sense of what the word "yesterday" might mean. Fortunately, that's where the exciting story leaves off, and the time since then (unless you count a trip or two down and up the hill) has been a fairly normal family visit. I can't honestly say that I regret going through all that -- meeting AJ and Aleah and Jennifer (and the actor from Portland whose name I never really learned, but was teaching AJ to juggle) was worth it, and really made the waiting at the station enjoyable. It's nice to be with my parents again, although leaving Liz behind was not my favorite choice, and thanks to Facebook, I'm much more aware of what my friends are doing back in Seattle -- I find that I would like to be spending time with them, too. The real question, though, is whether my train back will be any trouble... Posted at 17:02 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 19 Dec 2008So, Seattle was hit with a couple inches of snow in the last week, and totally contrary to tradition, it actually stayed cold enough to stick around. Then it snowed some more. The roads now most closely resemble very poorly maintained skating rinks. Of course, I was ready for this one! Last year, after a week of being stuck in the house or wherever I could very slowly hoof it, I had had enough. I ordered up a set of Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 tires (scroll down on that page to see them). Of course, they arrived after all snow was done for the season, but I gave them a try anyway. Pretty heavy, pretty slow, and I suddenly seemed to be in worse shape -- oh yeah, rolling resistance. But when the snow came this year, hoo boy, was I ready! I levered a studded tire on the front rim (a story all in itself -- I had to remount it 6 times, somehow pinching holes in the tube every time), on the theory that there was snow predicted, and this would get me half the rolling resistance hit, but still allow good steering and stopping. Then the snow hit in earnest, and I put on the rear tire (another story in itself -- I had to take the bus down to the theater and install the tire on the stage after leaving my bike there in favor of a ride a few days before). Now I was fully prepared when the Real Snow hit a few days ago. So yesterday, the director and I took a census of the actors, and decided that, damn the snow and ice, we would put on the show! (I'm stage managing for the Judy Garland Christmas Special.) The roads were covered in packed snow and ice, but people were raring to go. It's closing weekend, after all. I hopped on my Hakkapeliitta-equipped bike, and made the journey. It was slow going (I didn't want to ride too fast, or I'd have too much momentum to stop in an emergency), and the now-frozen slush next to tire tracks made for the odd butt-clenching moment, but I didn't really have any trouble. It was a trifle nerve-wracking to ride next to the big FedEx trucks down Phinney Ave, but all the motorized traffic seemed to have the same "slow and steady" approach to not crashing that I did, and I didn't even have any close calls. I took the Fremont Ave hill very slowly. The real surprise, though, was riding home. It was late (of course) and colder, and most importantly, a lot more uphill than the way in. My preferred route takes me up a hill that must be a 10% grade, but it's pretty short. Of course, this time, it was also covered in packed ice. And I just rode up it, as if it were lumpy pavement. The tires didn't slip at all! I was terribly impressed. The ride home, in fact, was almost entirely uneventful, and I saw only a handful of cars. As I was riding past the Q13 building (a local TV station), I noticed another hardy soul biking slowly along. After dithering for a moment, I turned around to say hi, and recommend the sidewalk (which didn't have any of the obnoxious tire-track ruts). We ended up riding together for about 10 minutes, and it turned out she was riding on normal, underinflated mountain bike tires. It seemed to work pretty well for her, until we got to an incline that I didn't even think about. She had to dismount and walk very slowly up the hill, though, since her rear tire wouldn't grip on the slick surface. That was one of maybe three other bikes I saw on the trip. Also, the one absolutely insane guy on a 50cc scooter with street slicks on. Not a choice I would have made. Riding two-wheeled on ice is insane to start with, there's no call for riding something really heavy with gasoline power behind it (unless you've got those buzz-saw tires they use for ice racing, of course, which is its own special variety of insane). The whole experience definitely left me pleased with my purchase of studded tires. They'll last me many years, in this kind of service, and they work really well! Posted at 11:28 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 02 Dec 2008
Wind
Posted at 10:54 permanent link category: /huh Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |