Bloglander

My minds jumps back to a time I can hardly remember when I see this image.  Winter in Seattle.  It was the winter of 1996-97.  I had just graduated from college and was living on my own for the first time.  I bought a new car and was living in a studio apartment on Capital Hill.  I was meeting new people and got reintroduced to skiing.  And then it snowed in Seattle.  Trying to maneuver in a city outlined with hills, hills and more hills and populated with people driving SUV's and Audi's like they are going out of style.  The only problem; most of them aren't equipped with winter tires.  Skiing was put on the back burner as I explored other aspects of city living.

Over the course of the next couple of years, I would ski here and there but worked a crazy schedule and had a hard time making it a priority.  Until one day it dawned on me that if it is raining in Seattle and 40 degrees, there was a good chance it was snowing in the mountains.   This is when I got obsessed with skiing.  It was my escape from cold, dreary, wet city weather and let me dream of the white fluffy stuff falling in the mountains.  And then it snowed in Seattle.  When it snows in Seattle there is little you can do to escape the madness even if you are the best winter driver in the world.  It was a hard to comprehend - a bunch of new snow to enjoy but if it wasn't the city streets prohibiting you from being able to get to the mountains then it would most likely be the mountain passes that would prevent it.  These memories are in a distant past but I am reminded of that time every so often and usually when Seattle is in the midst of their own "snowmageddon".

As I am hearing reports of stuck travelers at Sea-Tac International airport and read Facebook posts of friends and family inter-lodged in their homes for days straight after a Seattle snowstorm, I sit back and remember my Seattle days and enjoy the falling snow outside my window as I feel the result from skiing powder four days in a row throughout my legs and think to myself how fortunate I am that I am able to avoid the city streets of Seattle and mountain passes of Western Washington to get to the ski hill.