It Snow Shit.

Last week it was 60 degrees and the kids were playing outside after school without coats on.

Today I am sitting over my heater in the kitchen, looking out the window at four or five inches of snow. It started snowing yesterday morning at about 7:45 as I was leaving work, and didn't stop until about 10 last night.

I called the school about 9:30 in the morning because I had a feeling (I friggin' knew it!!) that school was going to be let out early and to let Cathy know that Colin was supposed to be picked up by his grandfather yesterday afternoon as his mom had headed out of town on business in the early morning. And that his booster seat was in my program area in the staff lounge. She said, "I appreciate you so much! You're always on top of things." She went on to tell me that it was great that I'd called during a slow time, as she had a feeling that she was about to make over 400 phone calls to have kids picked up.

We were right about school being let out early due to weather.
School was dismissed at noon.
All evening activities, including my program, were canceled.

Apparently snow isn't a normal weather condition here. Even though there is snow and ice and snow and ice and ice and snow EVERY winter at least once.

You'd *think* it would be thought of as normal, considering where we are geographically. And of course we get some almost every year, but from the way they handle talking about it, it's always a huge surprise to the weather guys and the media.

On-air snowgasms all around.
Off air, too. The news websites have snow, ice, snow, kids in snow, school canceled because it snowed, here comes the snow, do you think it will snow again tonight and gee, the roads are slick oooooooh it's scary out there!

In places where snow is expected in winter, they are great about plowing and maintaining roads. Sand. Gravel. Salt. Whatever it takes. And here's an evidently well-kept secret... they go BACK over and over to maintain the roads! Yes, they may have plowed and sanded a couple times, but as long as it's needed, they do it again.

But here in manic, pass-the-granola Portland, snow is always a surprise.
It shouldn't be, but it always, always is.

The big task of maintaining city roads for winter driving falls to a bunch of crotch-digging-earth-muffiny-granola-munching-hairbags, aka PBOT or Portland Bureau of Transportation.

Their spokesman, Dylan Rivera, says really dumb things on occasion. My personal favorite was last year after we were blanketed in snow and ice. People were stranded on the (unplowed, unsalted, unsanded) freeways about town. There were reports of taking four hours to travel a mile or two. Tracy Barry, from Channel 8 interviewed ol' Dylan. He seemed surprised by the number of people stranded.

From Portland Business Journal 12/15/2016,

"If you were lucky enough to be parked in front of a TV instead of parked on U.S. 26 with abandoned cars around you, it had to be KGW's Tracy Barry asking Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesman Dylan Rivera why such upheaval happens over and over whenever even the slightest bit of snow lands within the city.

When Rivera pointed out that his department had warned residents to prepare for extreme conditions, Barry interrupted to point out that while that was true, it didn't really help those who were stranded on the roads.
Rivera responded that anyone stranded should call 911."

Oh sure. What a buffoon. 
As if people chose to get stuck on the UNPLOWED and UNSANDED and UNTREATED roads. We pay gigantic taxes here in Oregon, and an assload more for the 'privilege' of living in Multnomah County. And our public services often just suck. Potholes and shitty roads. We, the taxpayers, paid for and built a huge jail. It never opened because we 'couldn't afford' to staff it.

We can afford multi-million dollar "art" projects like this one... referred to as 'Rockwood Sunrise' by the people who foisted it on us, 'The Syringes at Rockwood' by the people who really understand art.

So we have plenty of MY GODDAMN money for cultural shit, but can't lock up the shitbags.

Don't get me started, I'll go off on a tangent again and we'll never get out of here.

Predictably, 911 was utterly swamped with calls from the poor schmucks who were stalled out and/or stuck on our local shitty roads after Dylan's famous quote.

I remember hearing on the radio and seeing on TV after Dylan's brilliant 'solution' .... "DO NOT call 911 unless it's an emergency."

So after the debacle of last year, the city reluctantly made the decision to get road salt and actually, you know, treat the roads. Well, some of them. It still took us 2.5 hours to make a 20 minute drive home on Christmas Eve. Highway 26 received NO salt. No plowing. No sand/gravel.

Trimet buses were passing us and the rest of the traffic like complete fucking idiots. I guess they thought their tire chains made them invincible.

That's why shit like this happens every time it snows.

This is Highway 26 on Tuesday evening. That's a Trimet bus. And funny, same place one wrecked on Christmas Eve after passing us like a bat outa hell. Fucking morons.