adventures in snow

everywhere i look there is mounds and mounds of snow. while sitting inside those mounds are pretty...at least until at least until the dirt starts to show through. in general though, i hate snow. i hate the cold that comes with snow. and i especially hate having to be outside in it. but i love to drive in it. for me, driving in the snow is the perfect combination of winter sport and warmth. i'm sitting inside with the heat blasting while enjoying the adrenaline rush that is winter sports.

yesterday i woke up to a LOT of snow (around 16 inches) and the need to drive 40ish miles in it in order to get to work. see, as a nanny, i don't have a job i can necessarily call in with the excuse of 'snowed in.' if my employers can get to work, i need to get to work. lucky for me, my favorite winter activity is snow driving.

my neighbor and i spent an hour yesterday morning not just digging out our cars, but digging out our road so we could get down to the main road and off to work. living on an alley that is one of the last streets in the city to be plowed can be a bit of a problem after heavy snowfall. we're left to our own devices if we want to get to work on time. so we shoveled. a lot. for about 100-125 feet. let me tell you, i'm feeling all that shoveling now. after all the shoveling, we had to re-dig out my car because i had decided to try and plow through some of the snow without shoveling first. sometimes i'm not very bright, but i really didn't want to have to shovel my entire road if it wasn't absolutely necessary. finally i got on the road.

here is where i have to give props to the great city i live in. with the exception of tiny dead end roads like mine, the streets were clear of the 16 inches of snow that had fallen over night. city buses were up and running. other than the stupid businesses that decided to close for the day before the snow even started to fall, the city was up and running. you seriously wouldn't have known we had a near blizzard the night before if it weren't for the giant mounds of snow everywhere. go GR! i honestly can't figure out why all the area schools are still closed.

the drive to work went well for the first two thirds. the roads were clear, the traffic was very light and i was able to just do my thing. then i got outside of the last town before hitting the lakeshore. now i drive a very small car so it doesn't take more than a couple of inches on the road before my car starts to struggle through it. but i drove the last 12 miles to work in snow that was as high as my bumper while the lane going to opposite direction had been plowed clear. luckily i was not the only car who decided to drive that direction so there were some tracks for me to get into otherwise, i'd have been stuck. but the deep snow didn't stop me from traveling at 50-55 mph. man was it fun! as i was getting to the end of my drive, the roads were clear of cars with the one exception of the guy about 1/2 mile behind me. i decided to have a little fun. i sped up to about 60, stepped on the brake, turned the wheel and just allowed my car to slide. i let it go around a couple times, pulled out of the slide and was heading back in the right direction without ever having left the road. the guy behind me caught up to me just as i was coming to a stop. he passed me and i started off again. he and i met again at the gas station down the road where we shared a laugh and i jumped in my employers car for the rest of the trip to her house. at that point of the drive, the roads were no longer plowed at all so i needed her tahoe to get me the rest of the way.

by the time i drove home yesterday afternoon, the sun was shining, the roads were clear (some completely free of all snow and ice) and everything around me sparkled. it was beautiful. today is when the drive will suck because all the other drivers will be back on the road going too slow for my happiness and being general pain in the behinds on roads i drove just fine on yesterday. i'm SO looking forward to it.