I am at my desk at work, and I am safe.

Sadly, my Office chose not to follow the Federal closure today, so I dragged myself out of bed a bit earlier than usual this morning to check and make certain that buses would be running. And then I showered, dressed, and hit the road.

My tweets tell the story:

Ok 517a and I am off to the Metro Woodley Park

The sidewalks on my street had been plowed, so once I made it down the slippery stairs in front of my building, I was okay until I reached Connecticut Avenue. The pedestrian entries onto the streets themselves hadn’t been cleared, so once I picked my way across a lump of snow, I just decided to jaywalk (after checking for no traffic, of course). On the west side of the street, I found that the sidewalks were mostly clear, although at points, it was just heavily compacted snow. I noticed one bus-stop completely snowed under and unusable, and another one that had been cleared and had a passage cleared through it for boarding and disembarking from buses.

At WP escalator 525a. Lots of ice. Be careful. #wmata

I noticed yesterday that the escalator at Woodley Park was soaked, which makes sense: people with snow on their boots got on, the snow melted, and then it drained free onto the street level and froze overnight. Seriously, be careful, LOTS OF ICE, which made getting to the elevator a bit treacherous.

557a arrival at Med Center a few min ago

Once I got onto the platform at the station, I probably had to wait twelve or fifteen minutes for the next train in the direction of Shady Grove. Two trains, in the meantime, came through bound for Glenmont: both were coated with quite a bit of snow on their roofs. At Bethesda, I was able to connect to the internet with my phone and check arrival times for the J-route — the next bus to work was 17 minutes away, but Medical Center showed a J1 in eight minutes. So I stayed on the train and hoped to catch it — alas, I did not.

15 min wait for bus to work per nextbus app. Brrrr.

As it turns out, this was wrong: after waiting about 8 minutes, a J2 bus arrived. It was not displaying on NextBus.

Unexpected early bus! With running heat.

I should’ve waited: the J2 bus doesn’t run directly past work, so I wound up disembarking about an eighth of a mile from work, just to realize that the sidewalks weren’t plowed, which meant I had to walk pretty much the whole way on the road. Thankfully, it was early morning and while the traffic is light on a normal day, it was even lighter today.

***

But I made it into work — and shock and surprise, forty minutes later, and three other coworkers have arrived. However, they’ve all come via their cars, and I fear for the safety of my coworkers who rely on public transportation. Have fun with the non plowed sidewalks, folks.

Seriously: this is reason enough to shut down work. How can you expect people to get here safely when the sidewalks aren’t cleared? Answer: you can’t.