Global warming? Riiiight…

FOAD, Al Gore.

Woke up this morning to some really rotten weather.  Sleet and freezing rain, the latter being the last thing I wanted to hear.  That’s what makes roads impassable, coats everything it touches with ice, and (worst of all) knocks out power for long stretches.  That’s the situation that Jay over at The Extended Table is facing right now, being at ground zero for the storm in Oklahoma.

And I had to go to work in it.  Because, still being a new employee, I don’t have the time to take off, and I can’t afford a short paycheck.

My boss called this morning and said that if I could make it we’d likely only stay a few hours, as the weather conditions were only expected to deteriorate.  I was concerned about the road conditions but was also concerned about making the bills, so I decided to make a go of it.  Took me about ten minutes to deice my car sufficiently to proceed, but I found the roads navigable, if just marginally so.  The interstates and overpasses had been salted, but the rain was coming down hard and fast enough to still make things a hazard even without the freezing.  Luckily the worst of the ice seemed to be staying at bay so far, as the temps were hovering right around 32 degrees.

Traffic was almost nonexistent, but there were a handful of cars out there on the road.  Unfortunately they tended to clump up together in packs, which I hate even in normal driving conditions, but even worse in inclement weather.  If I’m going to slip and slide, I like to have room to do it in, and I don’t want anyone else sliding into me.  Everybody was too afraid to increase their speed to pass each other, afraid of losing it and spinning out.  So here I am, hyper vigilant behind the wheel, thinking to myself  “This is how people wreck in this weather.  They stick too close to each other, and when one loses it, they take out everybody around them.  So GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!!”

Yes, I like my space.  Especially when the road conditions are bad.

I did make it into work to only find our production manager and the owner (who only lives around the corner) had made it.  Worked to get some stuff out, as it was the last day of the month, and got told I could go home after a couple hours but still get paid for the full day since I made it in, to my immense pleasure.  Would’ve sucked to drive that distance only to get paid for a couple hours’ work.

Fortunately by that time (about 10:30) there was a little break in the storm, and the temps were still holding just above freezing, so the roads were actually a little better on the way home.  Stopped by Kroger’s to get milk and eggs (of course, what else do you need during a winter storm?), got some gas, and then parked it at the house.  Where it will likely stay parked all weekend, except maybe to venture out sometime to do my laundry, if the roads are passable.

A couple hours after I got home, the storm started up again, with the noise of sleet hitting against the windows.  When I ventured outside around 5:30, normally about the time I get home from work, my car was encased in almost a solid block of ice, and the street out front had a pretty good coating of ice on it as well.  Driving the 22 miles home from work at that time, particularly with it getting dark and the temperature sinking into the mid-20’s, would have been an adventure.  The kind I could do without.

As a side note, just to be clear: I only have liability insurance on my car at this point (having over 200k miles on it and probably worth maybe $650), so if I cracked it up skidding out on icy roads, I’d be screwed beyond belief.  Goodbye job, goodbye home, goodbye everything I’ve worked for and trying to work for.  I’d literally have to hitchhike back to Georgia.

Crap.  Just got a sudden craving for ice cream.  But unless I feel like hoofing it a half-mile to Kroger or Walmart in the dark and freezing cold, gonna have to do without for a while.  Not fit for man, beast, or automobile out there right now.

So I’m looking forward to a weekend indoors (luckily with power, as so far things aren’t expected to get quite bad enough to take down power lines) and whatever’s on TV, on the ‘net, or blogs (yes, I’m trying to do a little catch up)  And finish my latest Stephen King book “Under The Dome“.  Going any further than the laundromat, if even that far, is out of the question.  We’re looking at barely getting above freezing all weekend and the nighttime temps to sink into the lower twenties and even the teens, so the ice will likely persist for a few days.

Think I’ll make a crockpot full of chili tomorrow.  Yes, that sounds good for this weather.

Okay, now that I’ve bored you enough with current happenings, I’ll bore you more with a few of my most memorable cold weather adventures

I remember back in ’97 when I first moved back to Georgia from California getting stuck in an April Fools Day blizzard in Flagstaff, AZ.  Stopped at a Motel 6 the night before thinking, “gosh, it’s a little nippy outside”, after driving through mid-80 temps in the desert.  Woke up next morning to near white-out conditions.  A fellow traveler in the next room with a heavier car than mine took me to the nearest auto parts store to buy what was probably the last set of chains in town, helped me put them on my car, and then had me follow him out of the city.  30 minutes later I’m back in the desert with a clear, dry road, and snow dripping off my car.  Surreal.

Back in 78-79 there was a major icestorm that went through the Atlanta area that knocked our power out for three days.  My dad was away on business, and my sister chickened out to her best friend’s house on the other side of town because they had power.  So it was my stepmother, my brother, and I who camped out in front of the fireplace for those three days, which was also our only source of cooking as well as heat.  Fun times.

My favorite winter adventure was in January of ’82, when I was a thirteen-year-old 8^th grader.  We experienced what will forever be enshrined in Atlanta history and lore as SnowJam ’82, when a snowstorm (predicted but came in faster and heavier than forecast) hit during rush-hour and completely shut down the city.  Subzero temperatures all week, some of the coldest that Atlanta had experienced in a long time, had primed the roads to freeze almost instantly as the snow hit.  People literally abandoned their cars in the middle of freeways and left them there for days, as the storm and freezing weather continued for the rest of the week.  But it was heaven for us kids.  We had just gotten out of school early on a Tuesday afternoon before the storm hit, and was out until the next week.  My neighborhood was a fairly hilly one, so sledding was plentiful.  The woods across the street made a perfect battleground for the most epic snowball fights with the neighborhood kids that I can remember.  There was a good six inches of snow on the ground, puny by, say, Buffalo standards but quite respectable in the Deep South.  So we spent the rest of the week in a winter wonderland, only going inside to periodically thaw out.  Sadly, during one of those thaw-out times, I vividly remember watching on TV bulletins about the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac River, and the rescue operations that took place to pull the few survivors out of the freezing river, all captured live on the news.  Other than that, I have fond memories of that week.

Anybody care to share similar experiences?