Monday, February 05, 2007

It's snow Good!

It was one of the worst and coldest weekends since I came to Michigan back in 2000. It was 8 degrees below zero this morning when I awoke. As I did my morning rituals I had the TV on in the bedroom and the living room watching the local news as I do each morning. In the 20 minute period that elapsed the finally got to the school closing list that contains the school for my kids. By the time I shut off the TV as I was walking out the door, they still had not reached the part that was on when I first started watching!

Because it was so cold overnight, even though in many areas no new snow had fallen, so many schools were closed because of the icy roads. No matter how much salt you use in temperatures like this, it will not melt the ice on the road, hence the many schools closing. I did wonder though why they just don't show a list of schools that are open as the announcer said virtually every school in our viewing area is closed today!

The Mustang was hesitant to leave the dry garage and looked at me piteously want to stay inside. Since the alternative would be a walk that would surely lead to the loss of toes or worse, I drove. The roads were incredibly slippery in spots, but, carefully driving got me to work in twice the usual time; it took 12 minutes instead of six! ;)

Over the weekend with it snowing and being around 10 to 15 degrees I just wanted to stay inside the house. Danielle had her Odyssey of the Mind meeting Saturday, I must have been out of my mind to undertake the odyssey of taking a drive in total white out conditions (I shall post a picture of this today). Well, we made it, but, it was a ride literally fraught with danger. The Mustang is an excellent sports car and with it's all-weather tires it handles OK in snow. NOT a foot of snow, not during a blizzard, not when it is 10 degrees out, not when the development the coach lives in was barely plowed. When I went to pick her up 3 hours later it was even worse. It was snowing so hard that not only did I have to snow blow before I took Danielle out, I had to do it 2 and a half hours later when it was time to go pick her up.

I vowed to stay inside the remainder of the day but around 7PM Scott and Danielle wanted additional treats and convinced me to head out with them to the local grocery store. It was freezing, windy, and still snowing. I decided to tease the kids a bit and intended to do a fishtail coming out of the driveway. Imagine my surprise as we did a complete 360! In the few minutes we were in the store the car completely iced over.

Sunday we managed to stay indoors for the day other than myself going out and snow blowing. The X-wife was due home from Florida and she arrived with my older boy (who had been holding up at his Mom's house since he was going to be snow blowing there) around 6PM. I had offered to cook dinner for us all, but the X wanted to buy us dinner, so, in spite of my resolve to stay warm (and safe!) we headed out. It was fridged, windy, and snowing and the X's small car (with Scott, Danielle, and I crammed in the back seat) was hard pressed to have traction to proceed and we had the usual idiots going to slow or too fast driving around us (those that were foolhardy enough to be out!) to make matters even more fun!

The kids had wanted to eat at Red Robin, we parked and zoomed through the freezing weather only to find they had closed earlier because of the storm. We ran back to the car and ended up at Fridays. Danielle and I got the last 2 cups of hot chocolate and we had an enjoyable dinner and a frosty ride home!

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