
Dear people of Portland:
Learn how to f’ing drive in the snow. Inertia can be your best friend or worst enemy. Brakes are used for slowing down, but inertia is used for stopping. When on a slight incline, “flooring it” is not the correct maneuver for anything except for fishtailing and/or turning the surface of your tire into a thick black smoke.
Road conditions, as of about an hour ago: traffic on 39th sucks ass with increasing proportion as you approach Powell from either direction. 36th is quite nice. Powell should be avoided at all costs. A historic house on 26th and Division has been uprooted and put on wheels and is being brought down 26th and east on Powell, but is progressing very slowly because (1) it’s a FRIGGIN’ HOUSE and (2) PGE and Qwest folks are up in cherry pickers, detaching overhead cables that are in the way of the TWO STORY FRIGGIN’ HOUSE DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD. What I wouldn’t give for a live Google Earth satellite image of that spectacle. Because the ground is not yet icy, side streets are your friend. Even though you may think you want to stick to the major roads because countless cars have gone before you and there are nice pre-made “tire channels” of no snow on these roads, you have much more margin for error as well as fewer people who don’t know how to drive when you take the side streets. (If and when the ground ices over, that’s a different story.)
Pictures!