An Auspicious Beginning

Departing on our bi-annual Willoughby Assault on Hawaii is always an adventure. Traveling with a group of 11 is much like I would guess moving a circus is like. Most of the group goes one way while a few didn't get the memo and are off doing their own thing. We always have a great time and eagerly anticipate the next trip.

This year has begun in the manner of the last trip, in 2006: with a major weather event. In '06, it was the Great Blackout. This year, it is the SNOWSTORM OF THE EPOCH. Okay, to be fair, the SOTE is a real event. We had snow a couple of days ago, something that sends Seattle into complete paralysis, and it did. They began predicting SOTE last weekend, and they were right. It started snowing about 4pm and and by the time we left the house at 4:50, the roads had turned to complete crap. Rob had the chains on the car, and it still took us an hour and a half of sliding and creeping down I-5 at 20 mph to get to our hotel. On any other bad day, that's a 45 minute trip. We had decided that if the roads were going to be bad, better that we are close to the airport than fighting them at 4AM.

Briggs, Tina and Max are staying in the same hotel so we decided to find some dinner together. The "Ginger Kitchen," the cafe in the hotel was packed. In our wisdom, we decided to walk a couple of blocks to...Denny's. Yum. It, too, was packed but we decided to wait it out. They were shorthanded, so the wait was far longer than the predicted 15 minutes. No sooner had our food been served, and Max projectile puked on Alena. Sort of takes the delight out of a Denny's New York steak. Oh. Wait. That steak was pretty awful on its own. About the texture of an old tennis shoe left to tenderize in the middle lane of I-5 on a snowy day. I'm pretty sure the remnants of someone's chains were still lodged in the gristle. I

Leaving Denny's was an adventure, too. It looked just like something out of "Dr. Zhivago." They are prediciting high winds and snow for the rest of the night and the snow was blowing by pretty darn hard.

Hmm. The whole Wolotira branch of the family is watching "Sweeney Todd" right now.

Next: The clan descends upon Sea-Tac. Will they get out on time?