White Pellets From Hell

We spent the last few days journeying to Washington DC for a happy little wedding, which is why I haven't written anything in quite a while.

Overall, it was a fun trip, punctuated by the occasional yelling when someone didn't want to listed, pay attention, or other normal toddler behaviors.

Pictures will be up later this week as soon as I can feed them over from the camera, but for now just one bit of the story will do fine.

We left the hotel Sunday around 12:30 after a big hearty breakfast and headed for the zoo. The big points that Alex was excited about for this trip were trains, snow, and bears. He'd already ridden Metro a few times and seen the snow, so now it was time to see the panda bears.

We got to the zoo, and spent about three hours there. Around 4:00, it started to snow. We were expecting "light flurries" so no big deal, right?

Well, it started coming down harder.

And harder.

It was very heavy when we finished semi-sprinting back to the truck. We pulled out around 4:30 and headed for White Flint Mall. We got there around 5:00, and I sprinted in and out to return the tux.

In the 10 minutes that took, a 1/2 inch gathered on the ground and the temperature has now dropped low enough for it to stick.

Uh oh.

We tried to start heading out to the Beltway, but the access rd. to get on at Wisconsin Ave. was blocked. We had to keep heading south, and unfortunately, since we don't know our way around the outskirts, that was going to mean heading all the way into the district to get out.

While driving down Wisconsin, the sun went down and the snow got heavy enough to cause white-out. We skidded a couple times, but nothing too bad since we were going so slowly.

After about 90 minutes and only making it about 6 miles, I pulled off for McDonalds to keep everyone marginalyl happy. On the way out, I got to enjoy slipping and getting my wrist slammed in the car door while trying to hand everything off. Too bad there wasn't a video camera to record it and send it to win $10,000!

About another hour later, we finally make it far enough down Wisconsin to M Street. We finally turned off and went over the Key bridge to finally escape the North. We found an opening for I-66, swerved across the road to get on it, and drove about 30 mph because of the snow/ice mix on the road. We took it to the Beltway and made it onto I-95 around 8:30 where I could finally drive normally.

We stopped in Henderson, NC on the way back, at the same hotel we used on the way up, and got home last night. Today, it's back to work.

And the temperature is 64 degrees.

With no snow in sight.

Or stupid drivers.

Or ice.