I used to *love* snow. I mean, what kid doesn’t? A free pass from school and something fun and new to play with … can’t beat that …
Then I got a job at a newspaper. And they had a lovely rule in which we had to drive into work even in inclement weather. Understandable, I mean making sure our readers saw local snow pictures and got their latest celebrity news was surely just as important as working at an ER or being a police officer, right? I digress. Anyway, I was driving home on icy roads one night from work, and I was driving like a grandma. What was typically a 30-minute drive took me 2 hours. Literally. I slowly pulled into a turn lane, and then suddenly my car was turning in a direction in which I had not asked it to turn. I ended up doing a 180 in the middle of the intersection. Luckily there were no cars around and the only damage done was the fact that my heart was beating out of my chest. At that moment, though, I made a call – my work would have to fire me during the next snow because I was never ever ever driving in this stuff again. My job was not worth my life. Luckily, it did not snow at all the next year, and the year after that I quit for reasons other than driving in bad weather.
Now, I work from home. So snow days don’t affect me so much. That said, I don’t mind them at all – other than feeling bad for my former colleagues and anyone else who has to drive in it.
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– This season, I saw my first snow during our annual hiking trip to Mount Mitchell. And I lived in this snow for 3 days. And it was wonderful, but after 3 days of eating, sleeping, and peeing in the snow, I’d seen enough. Not to worry, though, it rarely snows around these parts and it was nice to be in actual snow – there were a few feet of snow on the mountain, and it wasn’t mixed with nasty red clay like the snow in Charlotte I was used to.
– Two weeks later it started snowing while I was visiting the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. And that was pretty freakin awesome. Nothing beats sitting in an outdoor hot tub with snow coming down. It was a beautiful snow, and a lot of it – about 7 inches. And I not-so-secretly wanted to get snowed in – I mean, there are worse things than being stuck in a place like GPI. But for the reason mentioned above, I had no desire to actually go out and play in it. And I didn’t get stuck – Jeff and his stupid 4-wheel drive got us home just fine. No extra spa days for me.
– The following weekend I was to go to DC with Colleen, a trip we’d had planned for months. The night before we planned to leave, it suddenly occurred to me that I might want to check the weather. And, uhm, there was a huge blizzard heading right toward our destination. We decided we’d make it there just fine, but driving home might be an issue. And that’s the understatement of the year – had we gone, we’d probably still be there.
– Then the next weekend (this past weekend) I was to go to Athens to visit Chris, another trip I had planned for a while. Snow foils again! It could have been worse – I won’t even go into the fact that I’m so glad I didn’t sign up for the Myrtle Beach marathon, which was also this past weekend. I have a couple of friends that had been training very hard for it, just to have it pulled out from under them last minute. I could not imagine how that must feel. So, I wasn’t planning to run a marathon, but I was so excited to go 8es dancing and instead I was glued to the news, watching the road reports.
(Okay, so I will concede journalism does have a place in this mess.)
Finally made it down to Athens, two days late, so all is not lost. But could the snow please stop? At least till next year?