I went to Portland to meet my daughter, when she was up visiting friends. I stayed with one friend for two nights and then picked up my daughter and took her to another friends’ house. They currently have an empty garage apartment.
My daughter was supposed to fly out Thursday, but the 10.8 inch snow dump happened on Wednesday night. My friends are on this road that is mostly gravel and steeper than it looks in this picture.
The tracks that you see are driveway. The line in the trees is the road.
My friend has a pickup and chains and left for work at 6:30. My daughter and I put my chains on my Scion, and tried the hill. We blew the left chain off twice and the right one was mostly off as well.
That was probably a good thing because her plane was cancelled and there were accidents all over town.
We spent 2 hours and 30 minutes on hold with the airline and got her rescheduled for Saturday at 11:30.
She left the next morning with my friend in his truck. He dropped her at the metro and she stayed with friends who live close to the airport and are on the metro line.
My friends and I tried my chains again on Saturday morning. B blew one chain off too and we figured that a link had to be locked in a certain way. He drove up the driveway and we followed in the truck. He drove along the road until we were down to where chains were not needed. I thanked them all and headed out. Down the road a little there were three more abandoned vehicles: a truck with chains on and two cars. There were still patches of ridged ice on the 405 bridge. It took from 10 am to 12:22 to get back to Washington State! So hooray for chains and friends!
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chains.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
Aretha seems to have come to both our minds…
Yes.
I guess when the prompt is “chains”, that’s what you get…unless it’s Sam Cooke.
Chains can be a life saver!
Thanks! Nothing like a bit of Aretha to make my Sunday morning. We were snowed in years ago. My partner’s ex was visiting and staying with us and I drove him to the airport only to find that all flights were canceled. We gave rides back to town to a few people who had been dropped off with no way home. On the way, one of them asked how we knew each other. We looked at each other and grinned. He said, “you take it.” I said, “I’m his ex-wife’s current lover” and checked the rear view mirror for the reactions. They were priceless. And we got a few bonus visiting days until the airport re-opened.