Stuck in Traffic: Hour 4 -- The Final Hour
This photo has nothing to do with this post, but it is one I took today while in the car. I see this all the time and have always wanted a photo of it, but today was the first time I was actually going slow enough to capture the magnificence of the "High Pedestrian Traffic" sign.
posted by carrie at 12/22/2004 02:43:00 p.m.
7 Comments:
Well, the icing on the cake is that as far as I know, I still have to work tomorrow. But wait...I live close enough to work to walk, so even if the roads are bad, I can still make it in. Julian and Enzo will be home tomorrow on a planned day off. But I will likely be at work for most of the day. Blah.
geeeez! sitting in snow traffic for four hours-- where do you think you are? in philadelphia??
I know! Snow like this in Arkansas? What is really going on? It's still snowing, by the way. It started out as rain today, changed to freezing rain, then sleet, and now we have snow.
Part of the reason it took so long is all the knuckleheads around here getting 'stuck' on the snow and spinning their tires. They have no idea how to drive in snow. People around here can't drive in the rain either, so any frozen precipitation is especially bad. Me, the Accord, and the sleeping Enzo made it places that 4-wheel drive SUVs got stuck. I did have one scary moment just after I got Enzo from daycare. It was still sleeting at that point, and my car literally slid down a hill and onto the curb. I couldn't do anything but try to steer.
I'm not planning to take the car out tomorrow. I'd rather not tempt fate like that.
good idea. stay home with the family. btw, 'the kid' is darn cute. i might need to make me one of them soon.
Notice I said I didn't plan to take the car out, not that I wasn't planning to go out. As far as I know, my presence is required at work tomorrow. I have the dubious distinction of living close enough to work to be able to walk from my apartment to my desk in about 20 minutes. I'm sure snow will add some time to that. So think of me at around 06:30 CST as I'm braving the elements to walk to work. What a trooper.
You think the kid is cute? I do too, but it's a mom thing. You know every mother thinks their child is the cutest ever. Are you interested in a toddler loan? You could keep him for a while to see if you want one. Just a short term thing -- I think about 15 years should do it. We'll take over for college. :)
Sliding in to work on cardboard sounds like fun!
This whole snow thing has me more pissed off than it should.
So first, yesterday I sat in the car for hours. From 12:15-5:00, with a stop at the gas station and a stop at daycare, but other than that in the car, armed with my camera and cell phone.
The main reason that I was in the car for so long was to go retrieve my husband from work. If I had just gone straight home from daycare, I would have been home by around 13:40. That's acceptable. An hour and a half to traverse some really hilly sleety snowy streets with the ignorant Arkansas drivers. No worries, mate.
What really pissed me off yesterday was after sitting in the car stuck in all this traffic with the roads getting slicker and slicker, my husband called me to tell me that his office was closing, and that if he continued to wait for me, he'd have to wait outside. In the snow. Emphasis on in the snow. He said that he'd found a ride home and asked if I could just turn around. If he had called 5 minutes earlier, I could have just entered the freeway going the other direction from where I was heading, looped around the city and gone back home. But I had already passed that exit/on ramp. So I told him this. He said that he didn't want to freeze to death and that he was going to take the ride and for me to turn around asap.
So I brave the on-ramp, get on the interstate, cross the Arkansas river into North Little Rock, take the first exit (which is the one I'd have taken to get him anyway), go under the interstate and get back on heading south. The best part about this is that after I exited the interstate, I had to stop at a light before I could turn left to get back on the interstate. He called from the car he was riding in, and he was passing through that intersection while I was waiting. Path crossing #1. So I make it back over the river, take the offramp that's adjacent to the onramp where I was waiting for hours, and am heading back home. I'm approaching home when he calls me again and says that he's in the car directly behind me and that at the next red light, that he's going to come get in our car. That he wanted to warn me so I didn't think he was trying to carjack me or anything and I drove off. Path crossing #2. So with my family reunited in the vehicle, I make the final leg of my journey. The car is safe, we're all safe. And my husband says that I'm a lousy driver.
Second item that pissed me off (though only briefly): work is closed today. This is not what made me mad. What made me mad is that I found out when I called my supervisor as I was walking to work in the 16°F weather. I had called the inclement weather info line my company had set up yesterday afternoon and there was no info there. I kept checking my work email from home, in hopes of getting an email one way or the other. After nothing there, I got up this morning and checked all the local news shows to see if my company was listed as closed. Nothing there. So I put on my shirt and pants, another shirt, my winterized running shoes, my ski jacket, a hat, and gloves and walked into winter; my teeth chattered rhythms, to paraphrase a line from DCFC. As I was walking I realised that I was going to be late, so I called my supervisor to inform him that I was on my way. He told me that we were closed. He said that the info line was updated last night at about 18:20, and that it's supposed to be updated today after 18:00 with information for tomorrow. So I turned around and came back home.
There's a good chance this stuff will hang around until then. I ventured out this afternoon to pick up some items from the grocery store. Non-necessities, but I just needed to get out. The roads are still pretty bad, and it's supposed to get down to 16°F again tonight. It didn't even make it above freezing today. From the forecast I heard, tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same. Even colder tomorrow night. Then Christmas day, we're supposed to break freezing. A high of 35°F. Woo-hoo!
I wasn't really dreaming of a white Christmas, but it looks like we'll get one. Why didn't this happen when I was a kid and it would have been cool? Now it's more of a nuisance than anything.
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