Friday, February 23, 2018

On the Road (Barely)

Looking over my recent posts, I see that it's been just over three weeks since I've said anything about my morning commute - a new record! Let me rectify this by briefly updating you this morning's commute. Don't worry, this one doesn't involve traffic.

I just wanted to mention that, the day before yesterday, the temperature around here was in the low seventy's. Apparently this is a new record for this time of year. By the end of the day, pretty much every trace of snow was gone off of my front "lawn."

This, however, is what my commute looked like this morning...



Pretty, right? Yes, it is... unless you're trying to keep your car from careening off of the road, due to the black ice.

To me, this is the kind of thing that looks beautiful, almost magical, somewhere around December twenty-third. By somewhere around December twenty-seventh, my attitude towards the once pleasing aesthetics of newly fallen snow begins to nosedive.

If it snows at the end of  December, I find have a reluctant acceptance that, yes, it's snowing again. What do I expect? It is, after all, still winter. By the next storm or two, my attitude slowly (and by "slowly," I mean "rapidly") devolves into greater and greater amounts disgust. And with each successive storm, I find myself heading deeper into the throes of the "Wintertime Blues" - the symptoms of which take me from the aforementioned disgust, to a semi-mild, but growing hostility, before finally reaching a more comfortable and consistent, borderline rage.

Generally speaking, this bad attitude lasts until somewhere around the following December twenty-third.

Anyway, back to the lovely photos...

The other thing you might have noticed in the lovely photos is that there are no other cars on the road. This isn't because the other cars have all slid off of the embankments. At least, I don't think so. I didn't really look. (It's hard enough to navigate the ice covered roads while trying to drive and snap pictures at the same time.)

No, I think the reason that traffic was light was because it's school vacation week in our Great State. However, once I cross over the state line, which I do every morning, it's a different story. There is no school vacation this week in the Not Quite as Great State.

This explains why, this morning, as I wound through the hills on my way to work, and after I crossed the Great/Not Quite as Great State Line, I found myself stuck in the middle of a forty-or-so car caravan, slowly winding through the tree lined, ice covered road, with not one, but two school buses up ahead.

But I won't go there. I promised that this post wouldn't be about traffic.

I'll save it for another time.

4 comments:

Ben Clibrig said...

I had never seen snow until my lovely wife and I embarked on our Valedictory Tour of the Land of my Fathers in November and made a bit of a detour through Zermatt on our way home. Holy crap! It's beautiful! It's white! It crunches when you walk on it! Who would have thought!

Herajasa said...

It crunches when you drive on it, as well. Though, come to think of it, some of that crunching sound may be the gnashing of my teeth.

Ben Clibrig said...

No wonder you need extensive dental work.

Herajasa said...

I think a steady diet throughout my youth of healthy snacks like Jujyfruit, Sugarbabies and Bit-O-Honey, might have played a part.

At least, that's what my dentist claims.