Adventures in Driving

If you are not aware, there is a blizzard warning for the northern suburbs of Indianapolis today. And did I go to work this morning? Yes. And just guess what I had to do at 5 o'clock. That's right, drive home in a blizzard. Here are the events that occurred on that lovely drive...

On the ramp from 70 east to 465 north, there were 4 disabled tractor trailers and several stuck cars in the span of about a quarter mile. Some people were waiting patiently for the road to clear and other where trying to maneuver around them. Me? I took the ramp to southbound 465, got off at the next exit and hopped back on north bound. Smart me.

About a mile from home, the roads looked pretty clear, so I sped up to go the speed limit. I'm tooling along, and then there is this truck/SUV thing behind me, following me pretty closely. Knowing that I would have to turn soon, and that my back turn signal lights are flaky, I sped up some more (about 5 mph over the limit) to give him adequate stopping distance. Yeah, I shouldn't have to do that for a tailgater, but in the end, I was looking out for my best interest. I start preparing to make my turn, and when I looking in my rear view mirror, I see cherries and berries. That's right, the tailgater was a cop. He pulled me over, and he just told me to slow down. I didn't tell him that he was the reason I sped up, but he didn't give me a ticket.

When I pull into the apartment complex, I find out pretty quickly that while they have plowed the road areas, there are not clear parking spaces. And it's not for a lack of free spaces, it's laziness from whom ever was in charge of plowing today. So I tried to pull into the short drive way behind our garage, and almost got stuck, so I backed out and pulled into a parking spot. I didn't get very far because my car got stuck in 8 inches of snow. Crap. I go inside and grab Andrew and we start shoveling the short driveway. About half way through, I notice that one of our neighbors are stuck, so Andrew and I go to help out. When we walked up, we soon found out why the 4-wheel drive vehicles wasn't able to move. They tried to drive through a 3 foot snow drift. I'm not even exaggerating. Who does that? So we help shovel them out. We went back to shoveling our drive way. As we finish, another neighbor comes home. The dude driving let his wife out so that she could clear him a spot to pull into. She was clearing it with a kitchen broom. What kind of man would make his wife clear a spot for him with a broom? I'll tell you what kind of man. A man that kept driving back and forth over the same spot in his Nissan Sentra, and when we asked him what he was doing, he said that he was "blazing a trail." There was maybe a half inch of snow on the ground. He was just packing it down so it could get icy over night.

Drivers amaze me.