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Falling snow (excellent snow)

This is the picture.

We were supposed to have a half inch of accumulation, but the snow starts while I eat lunch and the half inch is soon buried under another half inch. People in the northerly climes will laugh, but the radio station started announcing school closings immediately. The mercury hovers around 20 °F and the snow fluffs around like powder instead of settling into a slushy mess.

Oz calls. "It's really slick outside. Be careful. Give yourself lots of extra time to get to class. And if you get stuck on campus tonight, call me."

"Yeah, okay." I'm checking my university's website to see if they've closed yet. Nope.

I head out, giving myself thirty-five minutes to make what is normally a ten minute drive. I brush the snow off the car and drive away, observing that the very dry snow gives the effect of driving on ball bearings. The car slithers around on the road and the ABS does its thing. Noting odd little traffic backups here and there, I creep very slowly down the hill (my neighborhood is on top of a hill). The car still slithers. I'm used to driving small, front-wheel-drive vehicles and the Volvo, being a very large, rear-wheel-drive vehicle, handles much differently in the snow. Really badly, in fact, no matter how slowly I go. What do Swedish people drive when there's an inch of snow on the ground?

Okay. So I'm still recovering from my last automotive brush with death. I start to shake and suddenly it seems like a very good idea to go back home. I don't see the point in risking my car, my relatively low auto insurance premiums, and my already damaged neck to attend classes, the main focus of which will be to go over a syllabus. I still feel guilty because I never miss class.

I creep along Franklin to 25th Street and turn left on 25th to head back up the hill. The front end of the car tries to go up the hill as instructed, but the back end keeps heading straight on up Franklin (also up the hill, but much steeper than 25th). Now I'm sort of crookedly sitting in the middle of the intersection.

The guilt over cutting class quickly fades. I might be able to drive up the hill backwards, but I'm not up for the challenge and navigating the hill in any orientation or direction suddenly seems like a terrible idea when I see a truck, driving slowly down 25th, slide into a parked car. I gingerly maneuver the car around and park it on a nice flat stretch of Franklin in the middle of a block where it should be safe from persons taking corners too fast.

And I walk home in the snow. Up hill. Both ways. Well, only one way. Full disclosure: it's only eight blocks and I can look forward to hot cocoa, novels, and the internet to play with when I get there. I'm not expecting sympathy here.

505 words | January 19, 2005 08:53 PM | Real true story