Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

Yesterday was a fairly busy day. I had a hair appointment at 11:00 a.m. and had a couple hours afterwards to relax at home before heading to our two Christmas parties. We left the first party around 7:30 p.m. to head to party number two.

It was ridiculously cold when we left - cold enough to snow, which it was starting to do. We left the second party just after 11:00 p.m. because we noticed the snow getting worse and worse.

Driving in Richmond is like running the gauntlet at the best of times. Add snowy, icy conditions, and localized blackouts to that mix, and it becomes a complete gong show. A normally ten minute drive took an hour.

We managed to make it to the Arthur Laing bridge and would have been home in thirty minutes, but there had been an accident on the bridge deck, and northbound traffic was blocked. So we turned around at the BCIT campus, made our way back over the Dinsmour and along Alderbridge to get to the Oak Street Bridge. Of course, so was everyone else. It was a slow crawl to get onto Highway 99, but traffic was moving. There were a couple of scary moments, however. We saw one guy go for a slide and nearly hit the car next to him. And there were numerous cars pulled over, stuck, and even one in a ditch.

Once we made it onto Hwy 99 it wasn't so bad. The sanding truck had just been along, so we had good grip making our way back into Vancouver. We didn't take the Marine West exit though, because we knew trying to get up Osler would be interesting to say the least. Instead we continued up Oak and turned off on 67th and came down Osler.

We made it home, an hour later, in one, slightly frazzled, piece.