Alexia and I had quite the adventure last night. The above shot is of her car, turned perpendicular to the road just inside Olympic Manor, where we had gone to see the many houses known to have elaborate Christmas light displays. We had both gotten out of the car after stopping it on nearly frictionless ice, on which the car had already slowly slide sideways, in that position, one or two feet at a time down the slight incline.
Alexia is actually in this shot, barely. She's almost entirely obscured by the man you see at the far left, a guy who had come out of a nearby house wearing cleats to help. I was trying not to make it obvious to Alexia, in the moment at least, that I was taking a photo of an incredibly frightening and stressful moment for her. I did later text it to her with the message,
For prosperity. Merry Christmas! which she laughed at.
I think maybe we had gotten a little overconfident, driving down to that Crown Hill community just north of Ballard on 85th. That was an arterial almost completely devoid of snow and ice by then, totally easy to drive on. We pulled into the entrance to the neighborhood, which is very similar to the entrance to Danielle's neighborhood in Renton, and I was impressed by the display right there in the median with the OLYMPIC MANOR sign atop of which was a very cool, twirling carousel of Santas. We took the next right, thinking we would just drive a bit around the neighborhood, and on that first block it was a slight incline in that direction. we didn't get more than halfway up the block before the car started sliding backward. She slid back into a parking position and then got stuck by the curb, the tires just spinning.
At this point I wasn't all that worried. In fact, Alexia was frightened enough for the both of us—and to be fair, she
was the one driving. I only got a little bit scared for maybe a second at a time two different times, when the car started sliding sideways down the street. It never slid very far, but when you know there is no control over the car whatsoever, that is scary. Alexia's anxiety was compounded by the fact that this was a company car, and she was scared of damaging it by hitting another parked car, or even nearby garbage cans.
In that parked position, Alexia said, "I don't know what to do." I didn't either. She sort of kicked herself for not bringing any kitty litter with her, just in case. I figured she'd get out of the spot though, and she did: a few movements back and forth and she got out. The real trouble was when she attempted to turn around. She got the car as far as perpendicular across the street, but then any time she tried to move forward to move the front end all the way back around, the back end would slide down faster to beat it.
She got too close to a nearby parked car for comfort—the one you can see beyond the man to the left in the photo. Finally she decided she would get out and knock on a door to see if anyone had kitty litter she could use. She knocked on the door of the house that other car was in front of, and a lady apparently went to see what she could find. That was when the guy next door came out of his house wearing cleats, through his open garage door. His help was actually invaluable, because he wound up breaking up the ice on the road with his cleats—by now it was well above freezing and everything was melting, which actually only made it all far slicker—thereby giving Alexia's front tires some crunchy traction to use.
While the guy was doing that, the lady came out with all she could find: a bag of bird seed, maybe only a fifth still full. I brought that up to Alexia and she said that was not likely to work. And when the broken ice finally got her tires to catch, I just went and put the bird seed back on the lady's front porch. Then I carefully walked across the frozen snow and ice and got back into the car. She drove, very slowly and very carefully, back to the end of the block and left out of the neighborhood again. But! We didn't actually head out just then: Alexia very much humored me, found a parking spot on the mostly-clear 85th Street, and then we just went back into Olympic Manor on foot.
I asked if she was open to that, saying I would totally understand if she weren't. She was fully willing. In fact, Alexia really went above and beyond for me last night, basically just so I could get all the pretty photos I wanted or needed, which I really appreciated, and I told her so, a couple of times. Once the stress of possibly damaging her company car was over (she mentioned it being a company car several times, and how embarrassing it would have been to have to explain how such a wreck occurred), she seemed to be pretty into it and having fun herself.
Walking through Olympic Manor remained a challenge. This was actually the second of three neighborhoods I had on my list, actually, but we quickly gave up on Queen Anne, which is a legitimately steep hill, shortly after we got there. There were still certain streets blocked off as too dangerous to try driving up, and still we managed a roundabout way too the street Kerry Park is on. All I knew was that there are supposed to be pretty houses near there, and I got about three photos before we called that neighborhood quits and just went straight to Crown Hill.
And again, the street at Olympic Manor was barely even a hill, just a slight incline. When you're on top of melting ice, though, all that means is you slide more slowly—but you still slide. Even on your feet! I would say we explored about three full blocks of Olympic Manor on foot, with varying levels of ice slickness. The easiest was to walk in the crunchy snow in what otherwise would have been grassy areas between the sidewalks and the street, but we still had to cross sidewalks, and driveways, and occasionally I crossed the street. In all cases, it was icy, and I had to be super careful.
Much of the time Alexia was walking along, or sliding along, much more slowly than I was, and I was hurrying ahead so we could get back to her car sooner. I saw her slip a couple of times in ways I really thought she would fall, but she never did—and neither did I! Even with all my rushing, and varying types of ice cover, including sidewalks that sometimes looked totally bare but turned out to be slicked over with ice. I decided not to jinkx myself and waited to marvel at my managing never to fall until we got back to the car on 85th.
In the meantime, the entry road into the housing association that is Olympic Manor is 23rd Avenue, and most of the photos I took were on that street—roughly three blocks in. After getting some photos on foot of that first block to the right, on 86th St, I then took photos on the east side of 23rd Avenue going in, then took photos on the west side on the way back, Alexia already a block behind when I caught back up with her, and we sort of slipped our way back to the car.
I got a lot of good photos, though. Enough to warrant
a dedicated photo album to Olympic Manor alone. Well, including the three shots I took on Queen Anne. 29 shots total for that photo album.
I was so relieved to have made it out of there unscathed and with lots of great photos, I completely forgot about the other place I had on my list, a "Nutcracker House" not far from there. Oh well; I'll add it to my list for next year. Once back in the car, I said, "Are you still okay with going to Cany Cane Lane, if I promise you won't have to drive on icy roads?" She was fully game, and off we went, a roughly 15-minute drive southeast across town from there.
I figured the roads would be a lot easier around Candy Cane Lane, this being easily the most famous traditional housing association effort of Christmas decorations in town, and I was right. I still suggested we park and walk instead of driving the loop, just as Shobhit and I had done in 2020 and Tracy and I did last year. Alexia was openly happy to have done this once we did to the walk around the loop, because it made it a lot easier to observe the many fun details of people's houses.
It didn't really register until this year that the big carousel they set up in the center of the loop changes each year. In 2020 it was
a carousel of animals; last year it was
a train; this year it was "Angel Chimes," apparently done before, back in 1961. I thought that was pretty cool.
Another thing that was
very cool: the still-slippery sidewalks much of the way around Candy Cane Lane was a small price to pay, in my view, for the complete lack of crowds at this year's visit there. As in, we were among the very few idiots traveling around town during the ongoing melt of an ice storm. As I said, though, by last night, it had warmed up significantly, well above freezing, making the arterials easily navigable and easy to park on. We walked maybe a block from the car to the entrance, and saw no one else walking, and maybe three or four cars actually drive through while we explored.
I naively thought I would not get as many photos there this year after having been twice already; I wound up with
a photo album of 32 shots, when I had gotten 30 each last year and the year before. I seem to be getting better at finding fun detail shots, and Alexia was often helpful with photo suggestions.
All in all, we were at Olympic Manor about 50 minutes (roughly half of that just dealing with the ice-sliding car) and at Candy Cane Lane about twenty minutes. There was the brief trip to Queen Anne before those two places, plus all the driving in between; we left the condo building at 4:00 and were back at 6:50. So, it was about a three-hour outing. Alexia and I got back safe and sound, nothing dented or scratched or (in the case of our selves) bruised, having had a quite fun evening overall.
I came in and processed, edited and uploaded photos. I barely had time to write this post this morning, but wanted to get it out of the way since I'll be needing to write about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day next. And I need to head to the first of my buses to Olympia today in just a few minutes.
[posted 11:36 am]
