The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

		Snow day… VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Today, my friends Keith and Lisl joined Milo and I for an adventure in the mountains. The plan was to dig a snow cave and sleep in it, with an option to sleep in the cars if the snow cave didn’t work out. If you don’t know, Lorie has retired from winter sports unless it is somewhat warm (or warmer) and sunny, so she was in LA while we were in 20F weather. It also got colder as the day progressed.

The plan was to go to Hyak, which is now called Snoqualmie Summit East, because for the last few years they’ve been closed since their chair lifts had been washed away by mudslides and generally, they only have about 3 runs, so I didn’t think they were in any hurry to open up a money losing hill. (for background info: I grew up skiing here in the 1970’s because it was the cheapest, possibly free, place for the folks to bring us boys skiing).

We met at the Chevron station at the Summit at 10am, then proceeded to the parking lot which usually has about 3 cars in it, which is equal to the number of backcountry skiers I usually meet on the hill. However, the economy in Seattle must be booming because Hyak (Summit Money-Losing East) is now open, operating, and full of people!

Because of all these people, there are also those damn ski patrol guys there too. (FYI: both Keith and Lisl were ski patrollers at Winter Park, Colorado and I even had an honorary “sweep the hill at the end of the day” experience, which was very cool).

However, the 4 of us hiked up and around most of the area waving to skiers, ski instructors and ski patrollers as they came down. I even heard a few adults say to kids “wave to the doggy”. By the way, I was on on snowshoes, without my snowboard, Milo was barefoot/barepaw, and K & L were on skis with skins. After stopping for a late lunch on the back side of the ski area, which is groomed for another chair that isn’t open yet, a ski patroller came cruising up (also on skis with skins). He told us that we needed ski passes to be there and that  dogs weren’t allowed.

I then had Milo pee on him.

Actually, he really likes dogs and used to do search and rescue with dogs. Milo even liked him and he seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he was upholding some stupid rule of the Snoqualmie Summit area. And no, Milo didn’t pee on him.

We of course didn’t have ski passes since we weren’t using the chair lifts! Apparently, the over-priced ski passes are required for any area that Snoqualmie Summit leases from the state, plus there are no dogs allowed on their land either. So, after chatting to him a bit, he told us we needed to head back to our cars.

As the patroller took off and we prepared to go back down, Milo wanted to follow him. Yes, Milo is a loyal dog to anyone who is nice to him. On the way down, another patroller told us the same thing, but he even said “I really don’t care, but someone told us there was a dog here, so I had to check it out”.”

As we reached our cars, Keith started feeling ill, so we called it a day and went home. I chose not to spend the night there since I didn’t want to sleep in the car with Milo if I didn’t have friends to share in the misery!

Maybe next weekend.

He’s been at the farm for almost 2 weeks… looking forward to his chaos again.

I have now been published! Or at least a photo I took of Milo has been published in an e-mail newsletter regarding the South Lake Union area of Seattle. Perhaps I should keep my day job since I didn’t collect any royalties for this one.

Today on a Microsoft shuttle bus, my driver told me about his new year’s eve experience in 1966/1967 when he was in the US army stationed in Berlin. He and a friend were playing music in a jazz club (interesting in itself) when he took a break and stepped outside for a bit. He slipped on some ice and fell in the snowbank on the side of the road. Just then the fireworks started going off, but they were flying from one side of the street to the other, as if one side was battling with the other. He watched from the snowbank, somewhat in awe.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

I seem to be rough on cameras. Recently our pink Sony Cybershot camera died so now we have a cool blue one: Sony Cybershot DCS-W350. It’s slim and 14.1mega pixels so it should do the trick.

….Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone, which seems to work good except the inability to add a photo to a blog post.

Getting home from our recent trip to London has been a bit of an adventure, and still is for Lorie. Here’s our tale so far:

Friday, December 17

We were supposed to fly from London Heathrow to Seattle today on British Air 49 (BA 49), like we normally do. We got to the airport just fine, but noticed it was snowing pretty hard when we were checking in our luggage. The snow didn’t last long and resulted in only a dusting of snow on the ground.

We boarded the plane just fine, but then we were told that we had to wait to get the plane de-iced. After an hour or so, we were told that we were 6th in line to get de-iced. Then they turned on the video system so we all watched movies. Then they served sandwiches and drinks. Then they started the video system again so we could watch a 2nd movie. Finally after 5 hours, they said that they’ve waited too long and that they were required to cancel the flight.

30 minutes later a bus came to get us off the plane and bring us back to the terminal so we could get our bags.

3 or 4 hours later they still hadn’t taken the bags off the plane but they told everyone waiting for their bags to leave the airport. The “go home” announcement was the only publically announced communication of the night.

Then the employees went home.

Thankfully Lorie learned from some random employee that if we show up at a certain door (an employee entrance) at 6am the next day that we could get our luggage.

So we finally went to our hotel by catching the last shuttle at 11:30. Getting into our room a bit after midnight, we called our travel agent to arrange flights for the next day.

Then a mouse ran through the room.

Our upgraded room was a bit nicer and looked mouse-free.

Saturday, December 18

With 3 solid hours of sleep, I was off to the airport to get our luggage as Lorie slept – she was starting to get a head cold.

Standing near the magical “secret” door, I heard an employee announce that Seattle-bound passengers could go in and get their bags. This announcement could only be heard if you were within about 5 feet of the employee announcing it. No PA system. No bullhorn. No signs. Just luck.

So after 4 hours I finally got our luggage. The bags weren’t where the Seattle-bound bags were supposed to be, but thankfully the only 2 other Seattle-bound people left caring about their luggage found them (I think they were broke, homeless students who needed everything in their bags). I assume the BA system of incompetence and lack of communication had worn down all the other passengers who had given up by this time.

After enjoying our complimentary-due-to-mice breakfast (complete with old milk on my cereal) and abusing our late checkout-due-to-mice we left the hotel at 2pm and moved to a hotel attached to the airport. Much, much nicer. The taxi ride was slow due to traffic (again, weather-related), but otherwise uneventful.

We then washed underwear and socks in the sink, since the hotel’s laundry service wasn’t working because the service couldn’t get their trucks to the hotel. Yes, less than 2 inches of snow and ice closes England down. However, there are almost no 4x4s and maybe 100 pairs of tire-chains in the country, so this isn’t too unexpected.

As our clothes dried, we decided to go into the city to buy some newer socks. The tube is cheap and easy, so we got on it only to learn from others that they had been sitting there for 30 minutes. Then we learn that there is a signal failure at the next station with no estimate as to when it would be fixed.

Not trusting the higher-speed (and more expensive) train to operate properly, we opted to stay at the airport for the rest of the day.

After a good dinner and drinks with fellow stranded passengers (shared misery creates instant friends), we called it a night knowing we wanted an early start to check into our flights the next morning.

Sunday, December 19

4 hours of sleep later, we woke up and checked the status of our flights. Mine was still scheduled to fly, but Lorie’s was already canceled. After more time on the phone, Lorie had a new flight scheduled…. for Thursday.

So we checked out of the hotel, not knowing where Lorie would spend the night and I ran to catch a train to Terminal 3 (from Terminal 5 where we were staying).

Not trusting the tube given yesterday’s problems, I opted for the high-speed train (they both go from T5 to T3). It wasn’t running. So I went and sat on the tube. Thankfully after waiting for 5 minutes, it arrived and took off a minute later to T3.

I got to T3 where a sea of people were standing, sitting and sleeping. Similar to what was happening in T5, but it was obvious that Virgin Atlantic had given out silver-space-age-looking blankets to their customers. Remember, British Air just told their customers to leave the building even if they couldn’t get a hotel room.

Then more flights got canceled.

3 hours later, I was able to check into my flight, which was one of 4 or 5 flights not canceled for some reason.

As I went through the security check, I overheard a BA employee say “I thought the airport was closed, but Virgin is flying”.

Another hour and I was on the plane and not too long afterwards we took off, which caused all the passengers to applaud loudly since we were all very excited to have escaped, even if very few of us wanted to get to the Washington Dulles airport. At least it was a flight that would get us out of “snow-bound” England to someplace with functioning airports.

Landing late meant I missed my connecting flight, so I had to get a new flight for the morning and a hotel to stay in for the night.

Monday, December 20

After another solid 3 hours of sleep for the night, I was back to the airport to continue my journey.

At this point, I was out of clean clothes, but at least I had taken the free pair of flight socks from yesterday’s trans-Atlantic flight. So I spent the day wearing purple Virgin Atlantic socks.

….

Lorie is still in London. We hope she can fly on Thursday as planned, but we have no faith in British Air at this point. A pigeon will probably crap on a windshield and they won’t have the proper windshield washer fluid to clean it, so the airport will need to be shut down for 2 days. Or something like that. But hopefully all is OK and she’ll be able to fly on Thursday.

…..

To summarize all of this:

1. Avoid Heathrow airport if there is the threat of snow or freezing temperatures.
2. British Air has terrible customer service, except for a few random employees. I intend to avoid BA in the future if possible. The above story would be worse if I didn’t have a good travel agent to shield me from dealing directly with BA (however, they mostly didn’t deal with anyone from what I could tell)
3. Virgin Atlantic generally has very good customer service (real empathy goes a long ways!). I’d happily fly them again.
4. The American Express International Travel Service that I use as a travel agent does an amazing job at all hours to fix me up with flights and hotel rooms!

It might be hard to read this, but the wind chill factor makes it feel like 6 degree’s Fahrenheit. As I write this, Milo and I just got back from an hour-long walk in the sideways blowing snow in Seattle.  

For some reason, nobody else was in Lake Union Park tonight, so I ran around with Milo off-leash which is rare for him. It was dark, so I don’t have photos, but the lake was full of waves due to the high winds but there was also a layer of fog since the lake was warmer than the air. I haven’t seen that before.

The roads around Lake Union are complete sheets of ice and it continues to snow….sideways.

Did I mention I love weather like this?