Extracurricular activities - Part III, including a Grand Snow Adventure

Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Thursday, Anne and I visited the Infant and Child Cognition Lab at UW.  You may recall from several months ago that since Anne was born in a UW hospital, we had the option to put her name on a list to participate in various studies at UW.  This is the second study we were called about, so of course I signed her up.  Here's how the study worked:

She and I sat in room No. 1 in front of a little screen.  The screen went up.  We saw an actress do this a very corny performance rather similar to this:

Then the screen went down.  We watched her do it identically it a mind-numbing number of times.

Then we went to room no. 2.  Same set-up.  The performance was similar except this time the actress didn't name the object she picked up, and she also alternated which object she choose.  After doing this several times Anne was allowed to pick/touch the objects.

Afterward the researchers mentioned that she was very attentive and they weren't used to seeing kids her age pointing at the objects and saying "that!"  She got to pick out a toy to take home, and she selected a blue rubber ball with little spikes on it.  The researchers and Anne and I sat in the lobby playing with the ball and enjoying Anne's laugh, and I think they might have stayed all afternoon, except I told Anne it was time for a fresh diaper before we got in the car...

Friday, we played a little concert at a local middle school for their orchestra class.  My student Lindonna came along and held Anne.  (She is also the one who babysat her on Wednesday when Jared and I went to hear Joshua Bell.  She brought Anne a new cat toy and showed her cat videos on her phone.  Obviously she's got Anne's number.)

Saturday morning Jared and I played for church.  Someone in the pew behind us offered to hold Anne during our numbers.  Right when we finished our hymn she pointed at us and shouted "that!".  There were quite a few giggles in the sanctuary.

Saturday night Jared and I had been hired to play a little house concert for a surprise 60th birthday party.  Just before we left for the gig it had started to snow and there was a beautiful dusting of snow on the ground.  As we were driving in the dark toward the concert it continued to snow just a little, and I felt like I was back home in the Great Lakes region.  So familiar and cozy.  And so beautiful.

The concert was fun.  There was the host couple, the birthday couple, and two other couples in attendance.  The husband from the birthday couple mentioned it would also have been the 105th birthday of his father who was a professional cellist in Berlin. ...And he had some ideas for hiring us for another house concert in the future.

Anyway, it continued to snow while we were there and there was probably and inch-and-a-half or two inches on the ground when we left to return home.  We figured it would be fine when we got out to the main roads.  Not so.  I have driven in lots of snow in my life.  And I have driven in this sort of snow before a couple of times.  It's the kind where the ground is very freezing, and the air is just barely below freezing, so when you drive on the snow it compacts and melts and immediately refreezes as ice.  This is a problem, but if it's flat and you're careful, you're probably ok.  And if there are plows out you know the road will be clear soon.

But we're in Seattle.  It is most definitely NOT flat.  And the city has rather limited plowing capability compared to say, Cleveland or Rochester.  We made it down the first LONG hill, slowly and carefully.  Despite my care behind the wheel we kept slipping on the snow.   I have anti-lock breaks, and I know about driving slowly and pumping the breaks and not trying to steer too much, however I was not sure I would be able to stop at the red light at the bottom.  I was prepared to lay on the horn and go through on red, but we did get stopped just in time.  We made it around the corner on green and began up the next hill.  We made it up the first rise, but the second one we only made it halfway up before we got stuck.  As we were attempting to drive up that hill, several cars were sliding down toward us, and we ended up evacuating our car and standing in someone's yard, as the aforementioned cars were out of control, and we didn't want to be in our car if it was hit.  We were eventually able to back down the hill safely.  There was a man out in his yard and he told us alternate route to get over the hill which was straighter and less steep.  So we carefully made our way through the appointed route and tried out the other hill mentioned.  No go.  Half way up and we were stuck again.  So we backed down and decided we were not going to be driving home that night.

In the end it was probably only three inches of snow, but the roads were really impassible.

Decision time:  do we stay in the car all night or abandon it?  Unanimous decision: abandon.  We're not going to get any sleep in the car and we'll get too cold.  Maybe find a bus?  Jared knocked on a door and asked if we could park our car on their side yard.  Permission granted.  Two teenagers out sledding offered to walk us to a bus stop.  So we're in our long gown and tux with our violin and cello cases, hiking through the neighborhood with these two kids.

Serendipitously the bus stop they led us to had the 166 which terminates at the transit station just down the hill from home.  Even more serendipitously, I had four dollar bills and two quarters in my wallet that I'd been given on Thursday for UW parking, which was the exact change required for two bus fares.  We and two other men waited for quite a while at the bus shelter.  One man got up and left.  Then another teenager passed by who told us he'd been walking the 166 route for 45 minutes and hadn't seen a bus, plus his friend had called and said the buses were all taking alternate snow routes.  We have no idea where these alternate routes are.

Decision time:  find somewhere to spend the night or start walking?  Unanimous decision:  walk.  We estimate we're twelve miles from home.  If we start walking, we might find a bus, or someone might offer us a ride, and even if we have to walk the whole way we'll make it home eventually.  Plus, I didn't want to leave Anne home with babysitter Anne ALL NIGHT LONG.  Because no one would get ANY sleep.  Meanwhile, my phone is running out of battery, but we're occasionally checking in with big Anne to let her know our updated ETA.

The other gentleman who was still at the bus stop decided he wouldn't be making it to his cousin's in Federal Way that night, so he was going to walk to his dad's house nearby.  He gave us directions out to the nearest major road, about two miles away, so we started hiking up the hill again.

Shortly thereafter, an SUV with four-wheel drive pulled over, and out popped one of the couples who'd been at the birthday party.  They'd apparently come out looking for us and asked where they could take us.  So, in the end they drove us to the bottom of the hill we live on, and we hiked the last mile home.  Instead of being home by 9:00 we were home by 11:15 but with a lot of beautiful snowy scenery viewed and with another adventure under our belts.  From our vantange point in the SUV, it was amazing to see the "car-nage".  There were cars stuck blocking lanes all over the place, cars spun out, police blocking access to I-5 and basically terrible stop-and-go rush hour traffic at 10:30 on Saturday night.

...So I'm glad I decided to wear the red dress which is machine washable rather than the purple dress I'd considered, which is dry-clean only, given all the hiking in the snow that we did.  And I'm glad I took a scarf at the last moment and the warmer gloves.  My feet were very cold, wearing dress shoes and hose, but really it was a small price to pay for all the fun we had.

When we got home at 11:15, big Anne had gotten little Anne into some pajamas and had her wrapped in her blanket holding her little Tiger.  They'd apparently watched the snow fall, read a whole stack of books, taken some silly pictures of themselves, and watched Riverdance.  Anne's parents were here too - they have tire chains and had come out to get big Anne so she wouldn't be stuck in her car.  And Anne's mom was in the kitchen washing all my dirty dishes!

The Anne's taking silly pictures of themselves

The final morals of this story: 1) This is our third adventure in which we are stranded without a car to get home in.  AND 2) We are going to buy the tire chains we'd talked about getting and keep them in the trunks of our cars.  If we'd had chains, we'd have gotten home no problem in our little car.