Did you get whacked yesterday by The Blizzard? Yep, we did, too. After having watched the previews of the weekend to come on Saturday's The Weather Channel we stood with our neighbors in the lines in the local grocery store, stocking up on milk, white bread and toilet paper. You too?
I never understand why I do it. I go into the store to buy Pink Lady apples and the next thing I know, the spell comes over me and I'm cruising the aisles, filling up the cart. On some occasions, I've gotten home to discover whatever the original reason for the grocery store trip has been forgotten and I didn't get the item at all.
When I got up yesterday morning I called this number we have for inclement weather hoping against hope, and not being all that disappointed. The voice told me it was snowing and there was about four inches on the ground but that we were open for business. Just the kind of cheerful earful at 0425 on a Monday I so enjoy. The drive wasn't all that bad as long as you accept that in the snow you should drive slower. Many of us in the Northeast don't seem to fully embrace this notion.
We do stuff like turn on our fog lights because, of course, that's always the problem with snow early on Monday mornings. Very few of us have a fog light in the rear of the car, which I always found helpful when driving in Germany, but we have light stands up front that render second degree corneal burns to oncoming drivers but not to worry because we, the drivers, can see just fine.
I wagon-trained to work; that is, I fell in line with cars behind a snow plow. We all trudged (not sure that word really captures the speed) along behind one another like baby ducks down Route 12 past the Norwich Hospital Property on the right, looking very attractive as it was completely covered in snow, and past the cut-off on the left for the Foxwoods Casino (flashing for a moment on the number of folks inside who hadn't yet grasped that it was snowing outside, or who might never know because of how engrossed they are in other activities) and then passing to the right the Mohegan-Pequot Bridge shrouded in blowing snow to such an extent you couldn't see any part of the Thames River below the bridge .
Driving behind a snow plow is a happy-sad moment. Yippee! you say because the pavement is still clean and clear so the chances of slipping and sliding are diminished. Fudge! or other words that sound like it, as you realize the posted speed limit isn't happening today and you'll be lucky if the world whizzes by you at 20 mph. Eventually, perhaps made rash by all the fog lights coming at him, a driver somewhere behind you decides getting there first is much more important than getting there safe, and pulls out to pass.
The truck yesterday doing this hadn't actually put on his blinker indicating he desired to pass all of us, though that proved to be the least of his problems. I think I was seven vehicles behind the snow plow and this fellow was passing from what seemed to be a previous county (that's how far behind me he was). I admired the good fortune he'd had in not encountering anyone coming the other way, since that might have been dicey and as he pulled even and then in advance of me I noticed the flat bed part of his truck, with no weight, was doing a little jitter-bug as he skittered over the snowy road. The farther forward and faster he drove, the more frantic the back end was until by the time his tail lights disappeared into the curtain of snow, he was just about everywhere imaginable.
Our little convoy continued its slog. Nothing sexy, nothing stupid, easy does it. Some minutes later, near the incinerator to power plant over near Richard's Lounge, I think I saw the truck in the parking lot of the bar. Based on the tracks in the snow, he'd shot off the road and had continued straight instead of curling to the left, across a snowdrift and had stopped in the middle of the blacktop. I don't imagine that's where he was planning on ending up, though yesterday any landing you could walk away from was a good one. It looked to me like he stuck the landing but I could see in my mirror the Soviet judge only gave him an eight. So much for Glasnost, eh, speed racer?
-bill kenny
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