i prefer pi

Okay, this is the last post about the windstorm, I promise. I got up the morning after the storm, and there was no electricity. Worse than that, however, was that we had no hot water, because there was no hot water heater — it had been removed during some plumbing work earlier that week, and someone had forgotten to replace it. So I figured that I’d go up to the ProClub and shower there.

The drive, which normally takes about ten minutes, turned into a half-hour ordeal as I realized what a blessing traffic signals actually are. I arrived at the ProClub, where very nice employees greeted me at the parking lot, apologized because they weren’t open, offered me hot coffee and a pastry (strange for an athletic club…), and told me that the Seattle location still had power and water and that I could head over there if I was interested. The 520 bridge across Lake Washington was still closed, so I opted to go by the girls’ house instead. Laura had still had electricity when we talked the night before; perhaps they’d survived the carnage.

Then I hit the worst of it. NE 40th Street runs east-west along the north edge of campus and across 520, and it’s a sluggish thoroughfare on the best of mornings. Without the aid of stop lights to regulate the flow of traffic, however, it was positively glacial. It took at least 45 minutes to cover the quarter mile from 156th NE to the main part of campus, where things lightened up considerably. I think that the problem was about ten thousand employees not getting the memo that we were Not Open.

I finally made it to Laura’s house about an hour and a half after I left mine, but they were without as well. C’est la vie. We had a good time walking around and looking at the fallen trees and fighting the huddled masses at Fred Meyer, while trying to prepare for the Christmas party that evening.

The big windstorm hit on the evening of December 14th, which happened to be a Thursday and the night when we usually have our 20CF Bible study meetings. As the winds picked up, the rain-soaked ground gave way and trees began to fall, knocking out power to blocks and neighborhoods in rapid succession. We were in the middle of making spaghetti on an electric stovetop when Dave’s house lost power, so we finished up on his propane grill outside, read some Malachi and Luke, and headed home. I had my camera with me and shot a few photos.

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