It's snowing! The weather people didn't scare the you know what out of us this time, so naturally it's here!

Monday night, Jan. 15, 2007, I said to Mama after the 11 p.m. weather forecast on KGW, Channel 8, the local NBC affiliate: "You wait and see. We're gonna wake up with six inches of snow on the ground." Well, not exactly, but between 5:30 and 6:55, this is what happened on the vehicles parked to the left of our apartment entrance. I took this one with available light; I like the effect. How about you? That's snow in the air, making those streaks on the windshield and the dark side of the SUV. Click on the photo to enlarge it, and you can see it in the air. Unreal. Fun. I couldn't believe I was calmly walking up the street to wait for a bus! To take me to work! What a hoot, I thought. I had on my YakTrax and felt relatively sure-footed for an old lady. I did wonder about the buses and other vehicles in this hilly city, though.



I took this photo looking up 23rd, towards Burnside. Both of them are heavily traveled all of the time. The cross street here is Flanders, a block from our street. Once again, you can really see the snow if you click on the photo. It looks like rain falling, there's so much of it. I used the flash here.



Just south of the bus stop shelter, this truck idled at the curb. See the snowflakes pick up the light from the headlights? What about that snow between the camera and the truck that I focused on? I could hear it pelting the hood of my rain jacket.

The 15 came along pretty soon, stopping about five feet from the curb. Since the slope up to Burnside is noteworthy here, so the bus driver was being smart not to pull over to the curb.



This is the first photo I took this morning, looking out one of our living room windows, around 6 a.m. The snow wasn't too heavy yet, nor had much fallen at this point.



Now I'm off my first bus, the 15, that brought me from the northwest into downtown. We only slid twice, once all the way to the curb on Burnside when the driver tried to stop to pick up some people. The other time was just out in the street, going Salmon as he slowed down. Right now I'm standing on 3rd, between Salmon and Main, waiting for the 4, my second bus, to take me over the Hawthorne Bridge. I get off that bus right across the street from my building every weekday morning.

The first hint of how much of a mess the morning would turn out to be for so many people can be seen as I looked to my right, towards Main. A thoroughfare full of traffic, hardly moving a half inch. I saw later that 70 buses had some sort of trouble. Looking to the left after I shot this one, I could see so many buses that I thought surely one of them would be mine. They just weren't moving, though, so I looked around and saw the beautiful park.



This is where the beautiful golden ginkos were, in the fall. Remember those pictures? Here's several photos of the park as it continued to snow.







No bus came; nothing was moving on 3rd, so I decided to walk around to 2nd and Madison, to see if a 4 bus was sitting there, waiting to cross the bridge. From that vantage point I could see the Veritable Quandary, at the foot of the Hawthorne Bridge's west end, on 2nd. It's where Mama and I watched the 4th of July fireworks in 2004, with Lamont and Leland. We sat on the sidewalk, at a little table situated just to the left of that red car.



Portland Fire & Rescue, on the j-o-b, in the snow. Still no bus.



I still cannot get over the volume of snow! You can barely see the VQ sign through it in this closeup. And I'm still waiting for that bus, but now I'm thinking maybe I ought to walk over the bridge. I've been thinking about it for months, really, wondering if I could be brave enough what with my fear of heights and fear of bridges.



OK, I knew that it wouldn't be that long before I'd need to heed the call of nature, what with the amount of water I'd had to drink to take all of the Shaklee vitamins that Mama puts out for me each night. The vitamins help my overall health and my creaky old joints, but I was second-guessing myself.

Necessity became the mother of motivation.

I thought to myself, why not just do it, just start walking? (This was after I asked a man who had just walked westward across the bridge how it was. Slippery? Just fine, he told me.) So, this picture is of the VQ from the entrance ramp, heading eastward on the Hawthorne Bridge. I had walked that far in 2004 to take photos of the fireworks. I felt OK. I kept going.



Here's photo, out of sequence of course, of what I saw when I looked the other direction on 3rd, towards the north. See what I mean about nothing moving? As far as I could see, buses lined up, to go no where. I decided to walk around the corner to the next stop for the 4. Hope springs eternal at this point.