"In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed."
This languid Friday I briefly considered crawling back into bed and enjoying the snowy landscape outside our window.
But alas, no sooner had I crawled back between the sheets, a momentary twinge of guilt rolling through me as I thought of Peg slogging through all that snow and ice to get to the operating room, than a scraping sound put me on edge.
Maybe the cats were dismantling a screen door, begging to come inside? Or the ghosts had become active again?
Nope. See that little strip on the lower left side of the photo? That scraping sound was a snow shovel, and our neighbors digging their way down the sidewalk as part of their civic responsibility.
I feel no such responsibility, especially now as I watch it snow even harder out there. Why bother shoveling?
But shovel I will, when this snow lets up later. The neighbors already don't quite know what to make of the two rednecks who've landed among them. Allowing my inner Mississippian to let the snow pile up like old appliances in the front yard, while I sit inside in pajamas, would just reinforce a stereotype. He's probably drinking in there. I bet the whole place smells like bacon grease and poverty.
That I am here at all this morning is a nod to the divine, who protects fools and Irishmen.
You see, at around eight yesterday morning the alarm on my phone sounded to remind me Peg's car was due over at Star Motors in Vestal for Service "B". I'd made the appointment weeks ago, tired of having the instrument panel remind me whenever I started the little roadster that I was a slacker and a failure as a Mercedes owner.
"Service B is now ____ days overdue!" it proclaimed. The last such message, as I crawled behind the wheel yesterday morning, placed my procrastination at 160 days.
So off I went under threatening skies, east on the interstate past the horse track and casino, exiting at Owego and driving through farms populated with Holsteins and roan horses that seemed oblivious to the cold. The snow from the last storm hadn't melted up in those hills yet, and icicles hung from the trees over the two-lane road. My weather app called for a winter storm today, and those LED message boards the DMV uses to warn of trouble ahead on the highway warned, "AVOID TRAVEL".
I should've listened.
Instead I sat in the waiting room at the Mercedes shop while they performed $500 worth of maintenance, sucked a couple dings out of P's driver's side door, and warned me her tires were shot and needed to be replaced. They would order a new set, but in the meantime Jake warned me, "Be careful driving back on those tires--there's some bad weather headed our way."
On cue, I encountered the weather to which he referred as I approached Owego heading home, wet snowflakes mixed with sleet slapping the windshield. I had spent the first part of the drive merrily billing along the way, returning phone calls and strategizing over my cases. I was having a nice conversation with a lawyer in Alabama when I approached a stop sign entering Owego, began to depress the brake, and slid smartly through the intersection.
Oh crap. Thank God no one was coming the other way.
An SLK series Mercedes, rear wheel drive with two nearly bald tires in back, is not the ideal means of navigating through rapidly accumulating snow mixed with a slick layer of sleet. The rear end fishtails upon acceleration. The wheels lock and the thing becomes a 3,500 pound sled whenever I touch the brakes. I see now why folks here all drive Subarus.
My original plan had been to drive the scenic route down from Owego to Horseheads, but they hadn't gotten around to plowing and salting that little two-lane, now disappearing in the snow. Instead, I crawled back to the interstate, nicely salted and relatively ice free. I managed 50 miles an hour when I encountered a patch where the ice and snow had begun to overcome the salt and accumulate on the pavement, at which point my Spotify music stream randomly dialed up a song called "Slow Down", and the roadster's rear end started to fishtail again.
I hear you, Elohim. Not so subtle, but I reckon I'm dense enough to need specific guidance. Forty miles an hour it is.
Meanwhile the locals were blasting past me like it was a dry summer morning. I found the semis especially disconcerting, approaching with twenty or thirty miles and hour of closure, then showering me in a cascade of grey snow and muck as they passed.
Just east of Elmira an assembly of fire trucks, an ambulance, and several New York State Police cruisers lined the opposite shoulder, a shivering trooper walking the fog line setting flares. I learned later that a semi had lost control and tumbled over the embankment toward the Chemung River below. I haven't checked the news to see how the driver fared. It didn't look promising from my vantage point. I slowed down a little more.
I decided to leave the interstate one exit early, so I could drive the road from Guthrie Corning Hospital to the house and assess it for P, who'd come home that way in a few hours.
If it had ever been salted and plowed, that was a long time ago. The road was barely discernible under the blanket of snow.
It got much worse after that photo, as I crawled past the country club toward town.
I managed to slide again as I descended the Chemung River bridge into town, almost slipping into the middle of the intersection at Cohocton Street. Then the rear wheels didn't want to bite when the light turned green, resulting in more sliding and fishtailing until the car righted itself and I made my way down Denison Parkway.
Looking to my left at Southside Hill, I wondered if the roadster would make it up the steep incline to the house. Surely they'd plowed Cedar and Pine Streets, the two main paths to the top of the hill.
Well, no. They hadn't. And no, the car couldn't make it up the hill, stalling and sliding backwards only maybe twenty yards into the ascent. Neighbor kids carrying toboggans smiled and tittered among themselves at the old Florida fool who thought it would be a good idea to drive something other than a Subaru in what was fast becoming a blizzard.
Dejected and defeated only a few hundred yards short of my goal, I left the old girl parked down by the Presbyterian Church, the same one that serenades me with hymns (this time of year Christmas carols) from its steeple twice a day, and trudged through the snow up Pine Street to Tara.
Later in the day I heard the plow scrape its way up Pine Street while I was on another conference call, and dashed back down to take advantage of the respite and bring the car up to the garage. They hadn't plowed 1st Street, however, and while trying to pull out of my parking space I found myself stuck and jackknifed into traffic, until a nice neighbor set down his snow shovel to help push and rock the car out of its icy parking space. I was home free! Just a few hundred yards up Pine and into our alley and . . .
I was stuck again, wheels spinning on the incline of the alleyway, unable to reach the garage that was only maybe twenty feet away. I put the car in neutral, rolled backwards down onto Pine Street, and parked the car two doors down from the house.
Peg worked late, but the local public works folks had done a good job of clearing the road to the hospital by then, and her drive in her all wheel drive SUV was a yawner. She's been through all this a few times while I've been away, and suggested maybe we could reach the garage in the roadster by going around the block, so it would be a downhill approach along the alleyway. Her plan went off with no drama, not so much as a spinout, and the car is now safely sheltered in the garage.
That heavy snow is starting to let up a little, turning to sleet as near as I can tell. I reckon it's time to bundle up, find that snow shovel, and do my neighborly duty.
Bình luận