I woke up to what I thought was about ten inches of snow this morning when in fact it was more like twenty four. I let the car warm up for fifteen minutes and then it took me another ten just to brush all of the snow from the car. I didn't have a clear path as I backed out of the driveway, so I kept the wheel straight, gunned it, and hoped for the best.
It's a good mile from our house to the main road and uphill all the way. I was driving about twelve miles an hour in second gear, tires spinning, back-end fishtailing. The two drivers behind me doing the same, as the big, fat snowflakes kept on falling.
I decided to take the long way to work because the faster way would have been a lot slower and in my mind, more dangerous. Someone had spun out at the entrance to the highway and cars were backed up for what looked like miles. Plus, I needed to know I could go twenty five in a thirty five instead of being terrified of going thirty in a sixty with semis and hot dog SUVs passing me doing fifty.
The further west I drove the less snow there was and the less gas I had. I pulled into the station and filled up the tank but not before I had to use the corner of my snow brush to chip the ice from around the gas cap door so that I could get it open. Took me a good couple of minutes as the wind blew my hair back and then forward, to the left and into my eyes, then back and forward, into my eyes again.
They said the worst of it would be over by seven o'clock. And they were right. It hasn't been snowing for hours. And it seems to have warmed up some.
Standing by the window just now, I could hear the snow melting, falling slowly from an awning out back, dripping slowly...
Drip...
Drip...
Dripping...
...deep down into the drift beneath my open window.
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