It was actually Thursday afternoon that I departed from Portland, headed towards the Wahkiacus WA to meet up with some friends, and see a guy about some biomass to methanol conversion systems.
I was supposed to be there on Thursday the 19th, and neglected to notice that it was actually the 12th.
At least I got the day of the week right.
Having maneuvered through some excitingly rural roads into the middle of nowhere, I found the place empty, and made contact with my associate, who informed me that it wasn’t the 19th.
Right. Okay.
So I’m losing my mind.
That sort of intertwines itself with the rest of the escapade.
I then headed for Seattle, for my second engagement, with another associate who we’ll call “Zebulon Zamboni Underpants,” at least until court proceedings have closed.
I don’t think it was entirely stupid of me to try and make it through Snoqualmie pass in the dark on April 12, because that wouldn’t usually necessitate driving through a snowstorm on rain slicked roads at 33 degrees in half a blizzard.
But those were the conditions, and my rear wheel drive without traction tires made it through unscathed through a combination of luck and skill.
Mostly luck, I’m guessing.
Luck that I used up on the way to Issaquah, where Zeb informed me he had traveled to, to pass the time away from the flocks of tweakers Seattle had offered him for company.
Immediately upon arrival I downed a large shot of whiskey and two beers,
Followed by a small bottle of wine and another, cheaper beer at a hotel across the way.
Zeb and I did some drunken kung fu to prepare ourselves for the engagement the next day.
Did I mention lack of forethought and planning on both our parts were the primary motivators for this whole endeavor?
Dawn broke on Friday The Thirteenth of April 2018,
As it tends to do,
Without any warning that I had already used up all my luck.
Due to further exceptionally poor planning, it didn’t occur to me to gas up before we got out on the highway. A quick look at driving conditions let us know the pass was clear, but with a bit of snow and slush.
Perhaps the wreck happened after we headed out, or maybe the traffic center just didn’t bother to warn us, but as we maneuvered up into the mountains, the temperature dropped and the rain turned to snow. I weaved back and forth through a host of novices without thermometers who were driving like the whole freeway was a skating rink, until we all ground to a complete halt for no obvious reason.
And there we sat, watching the gas gauge slowly dip towards empty, moving forward a few feet every half hour… Watching other people get out of their cars in park with engines off to walk their dogs, pee, smoke, take pictures and throw snowballs into the thawing lake nearby… Slowly working our way through Zeb’s music playlist on his phone,
For ALMOST FOUR HOURS.
The view was nice.
We had plenty of time to discuss the finer things in life, such as what Spock’s kid would be like if he was raised on Vulcan, why the fuck the middle east is called the middle east (and if so then where is the middle west?) and to speculate at great length about what the fuck might possibly have happened around the bend that would destroy everyone’s schedule so thoroughly that day.
Apparently, two semi trucks tried to be in the same place at the same time when one of them blew out its rear tires, and effectively blocked the entire roadway.
http://komonews.com/news/local/crashes-snarl-traffic-near-snoqualmie-pass
Right about when traffic cleared, my newish, smarter than average rental car notified us we had 50 miles till empty, so we pulled off and got gas at the first station which was not surprisingly inundated with seething hordes of sweaty, angry people, who all missed their appointments that day. I myself was in the midst of a torrential armpit downpour of flop sweat, so we all had stuff to relate about.
Having refueled and grabbed a burger for Zeb, we embarked yet again,
With the sort of zeal that only a zombified half hungover version of myself that had slept six hours followed by an additional several empathically soaking up the rage of everyone else in the parking lot that was i90 through Snolqualmie that day,
Or,
“Less than exuberantly,” we wound our way down out of the mountains into Yakima.
Zeb had a bad weekend the previous week, which resulted in him spending some time in a Seattle jail for reasons which his lawyer would probably recommend I not publish on the internet. He was not happy to return home and find his roommate in the process of robbing him, which is sort of why he wanted to get back in a hurry.
For reference, I DID ASK, before driving up, if he had any outstanding warrants.
He said no.
And maybe at that time, that was true.
But by the time we got to the Yak, it was not. And neither of us knew.
So when he called the police to assist him in retrieving his possessions from the house he was not legally allowed to enter due to domestic violence charges (of which there is no evidence and he is not guilty, btw) they arrived promptly… And arrested him. Again.
Second time that week.
I waved to him as they drove off to jail, then sat in my car with his bag and all of his gear at around 7:30 pm, pondering the situation, and whether or not it would prudent to go slap the shit out of his thieving asshole roommate before driving back down to PDX… Completely exhausted, in the dark, and with the sky pissing on my head; as that is the standard drive into Portland to which I am accustomed.
Of course, any additional legal issues were going to further complicate an already fairly complete clusterfuck, so I hit the road – bleary eyed and miserable but not actually sleepy.
Nobody died, and I didn’t get shot or arrested, and I made it back by 10:30, so it could have been worse.
But not by much.
I’m going to rank this as a mission failure with a disaster level of 9/10.
Someday there will be a 10/10,
But I won’t be here to write about it on account of having been eaten by piranhas, then shat back out, and having my remains thrown into a volcano by amputee circus clowns.
Maybe it will make the news.
