Flashbacks:
The RNGC Caddyshackpocalypse
Bollards!
In our continuing Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE (tm), Confidential Restonian Operative "youhavemail" forwarded these photos of the chaos that was Sunrise Valley Drive last night, where folks who managed to thread the needle between the scores of abandoned cars on the Toll Road found this scene of carnage. Get ready to relive the excitement and suspense of sitting, and sitting, and sitting...
Big ups for the folks who pitched in to help get people moving on Sunrise Valley last night. Most people on the road pretty much gave up on trying to make headway and just turned their cars off blocking the rest from getting by.
And wrapping up our Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon 2011 (TM) TEAM COVERAGE, at least for the moment, please to be enjoying this photo of Metal Bob in the snow, as the shadows and sky contribute to what appears to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but is only Lake Anne, the end.
I would give you photos from my hellish commute, but all I have are shots of the backs of other cars as I sat in mine for 8.5 hours, coming home to Reston from Vienna. Less than 1 mile per hour!
ReplyDeleteThe best part of that last pic is how I just got yelled at by my wife when she mistakenly thought that *I* got out of the house to go take it. Mostly because I've done it in previous installments of Thundersnowprisingpocalypsmageddon ...
ReplyDeleteschools are closed because roads like Soapstone are reduced to 1.5 lanes by fallen trees
ReplyDeleteWiehle was bumper to bumper from the park and ride to points north. Took an hour just to get OUT of the park and ride thanks to people on Wiehle heading for less desirable South Reston and blocking the intersection when the light changed (thanks, boneheads!). On the way home, I saw a tree fall on a snowplow in the oncoming lane... and then the police made us detour onto North Shore, no doubt due to other fallen trees. Fun times!
ReplyDeleteThere were supposedly something like 10 trees down on Wiehle at the height of the storm. Apparently a snowplow managed to push a number of them aside, but they were still working on the last of them with chainsaws at 1am.
ReplyDeleteThe Peasant is electrified, or more precisely re-electrified -- after 24.5 hours sitting in his ever colder hovel after the power went out last night at 6:55 p.m., it came back on at 7:25 this evening.
ReplyDeleteStill 37,000 unfortunate souls in NoVa as of 7:00 p.m. without power. Highest commendation to the utility crews who work in this weather to get us reconnected to the grid -- true heroes. A big boo to the management of Dumbinion Virginia who steadfastly refuse to bury exposed power lines, because they think their genius tree butchers from Asplundh can solve the problem of tree branches falling on power lines.
Memo to Dumbinion: BURY THE DAMN LINES!
I just want to say to all of you poor souls how sorry I am that you had to spend so much time stuck in traffic for hours on end to go even a few hundred yards. Alas, as much as I would have like to have join you in your traffic-bound frolicking, FCPS was closed so this Convict stayed home with the Delinquents.
ReplyDeleteBut fear not, my compatriots, I didn't have to burn any of precious vacation time for this as I was able to TELEWORK. Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot more difficult than one might think. There were so many decisions to make, like appropriate office attire: should I put on a robe or should I go with the pajama bottoms and a sweat shirt? Since the Deliquents were home, I went with the PJs and sweats. And then there was meal time: should I cook, or do we walk to Five Guys? We opted for a home-cooked meal. And the last and most difficult question: do we dine alone or do we invite the neighbors over to our pity party? (The Missus was stuck in traffic. She should have heeded my warnings and left at 3 pm instead of 5 pm.) I must tell you that I felt really horrible breaking bread with the neighbors knowing that so many of you road warriors were stuck in your vehicles without food or water. Fortunately, The Missus arrived right in the middle of mealtime. Dickens couldn't have written it any better.
However, as an act of sympathy for my fellow commuters, I did hold my bladder for five hours. Well, actually I didn't, but I did think about it. And we did have the TV turned on listening to the endless cycle of talking heads telling us how bad it was outside, just like all of you car-bound hounds listening to the radio. Well, actually, it wasn't the radio. We watched Doktor Zhivago. I couldn't decide whether your experiences were more like the trench warfare of WWI (the jobs you left), the cramped famine of post-Revolutionary Moscow (you inside the cars) or the frozen wasteland of Yuriatin (you outside your car).
My suggestion, folks, when FCPS closes, you should all consider using vacation, sick or LWOP unless you don't mind being stuck in traffic. As the additional 60,000 arrive, the nightmare is only going to get worse. You have been warned.
Driving through all the muck yesterday and looking at all the downed trees and the smell of pine trees in the air just like last year I got a sence of dajavu and I wonder if the time is right and will there again be a call for volenteers to dig out the schools so the kids can return to school once again?
ReplyDeleteWhy would they call for volunteers? After all, there's no school on Monday or Tuesday because of previously scheduled teacher -ahem- work days.
ReplyDeleteChop the pines --- after two years in a row, haven't you learned that they are a bad idea?
ReplyDeleteOf course, with Hudgins' not-so-brilliant idea to put the roads on a "diet," the next time you need to get somewhere you will have fewer still lanes to do so and even more time to idle away your time and gas and wet your pants.
Bury the lines?
ReplyDeleteHello?? This is Reston, not Bethesda -- the "damn lines" are buried!
Anon 1:56:
ReplyDeleteHello! Take a ride down Lawyers Road and look up at the damn electric lines above your head on the south side of the street.
This is the stupidity of Dumbinion Virginia; while all the residential lines in Reston are indeed buried, the feeder lines are not. The tree butchers from Ass-plundh can't reach the limbs 100 feet above them, so all the money Dumbinion spends on pruning is ultimately useless. If the feeder lines were buried, a large section of south Reston would essentially be immune from power blackouts.
Even not-so-bright PEPCO is planning to spend $15 million a year for each of the next five years to bury its problem lines. So, once again: BURY THE DAMN LINES!
Give it up Peasant --- sell that hovel you call home and move to North Point! 'Lectricty went on in 1982 and has not gone out since.
ReplyDeleteJust some wires near that Memco, Hechinger, Home Depot outparcel (with the ever so artfully manicured trees near said wires -- which, we are sure are DRB approved), but that's not Real Reston, but, rather, some reject from one of the Brutalist achitects' sketch pads that somehow got approved by the DRB.
You just gotta hate-love this so-called nonsense place with the $200,000-a-year-do-nothing-"Chief Ececutive Officer" aka Reston!
PS -- I would take a ride down Lawyer's Road, but it's been put on a "diet" by your girl Hudgins and is too thin for a Macaroni Grill lover like me.
ReplyDeleteOff now to the Grill just now for some gooey rib-sticking bread and wine!
Catch 'ya on the flip side.
I love Restonian, but this hotheaded jerk who cares way more about Hudgins than is healthy and normal is making the comments less and less fun all the time.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:25/7:28
ReplyDelete"... move to North Point! 'Lectricty went on in 1982 and has not gone out since."
Maybe next time before you post, check your facts. Go to Restonian's entry directly below this one that shows Dominion Virginia's outage map. Follow Reston Parkway all the way up north on the map. Wait, what's that a little below Wiehle? A blue dot indicating a power outage just a block from North Point! It appears to be Old Tiverton Circle. So, yeah, power never goes out in your neck of the woods.
Consider yourself hoisted on your own petard. Now go back to whatever bridge across the Toll Road it is that Restonian trolls live under, and enjoy your Macaroni Grill breadsticks. Bon appetit!
It would be funny if two regular commenters that hate each on here are actually falling in love in real life and don't know each other's secret online identity. Kind of like in the movie "You've Got Mail". But the opposite.
ReplyDeleteperhaps we'll have a movie or at least a RCC play about it
ReplyDeleteOnly an opera would be able to convey the amazing emotions of that storyline.
ReplyDeleteWho could love that Brutalist --- and look where he lives? In some gawd awful dysfunctional, hideous box!
ReplyDeleteMost of us learned that liberalism, Brutalism and drinking the Kool-aid are all failures. We've moved on and we understand that misery does NOT love company.
Hopefully he will go back to suffering in silence and let the bulldozers finalize the failed not-so-Utopian disgrace known as Lake Anne.
I live on Olde Tiverton Circle -- the power has not gone out here.
ReplyDeleteNPDB says:
ReplyDelete"I live in a simulacrum of a building developer's fantasy of what village on Cape Cod must look like.
I love Sarah Palin and Ayn Rand.
Mmmm mmmm breadsticks and tea!"
10:47 of January 28 is on to something. I think the Northpoint troll and Cathy Hudgins are actually secret lovers who alternate their canoodling sessions between the Northpoint Starbucks and the South Reston Section 8 housing
ReplyDeleteBread and Tea --- works for me!
ReplyDeleteAnd, let's not forget that North Point was approved by YOUR DRB.
Thank God and the Satan that there are no Brutalist abominations on Cape Cod or in North Point.
Don't forget those bastions of egalitarianism known as Section 8 housing as well, 11:52.
ReplyDeleteSo I think the Troll is a renter that lives in St. John's Wood Apt on Old Triverton Cir...it would explain all the "your DRB" and all the rest.
ReplyDelete