Driving Home & Photos

Wow the commute home was interesting. It took me forever just to get 1 mile from my office (about 40 minutes!) because a school bus was having a hard time on the ice and slush that the city had not cleaned off (more on that in a moment). The bus was sliding a lot so it was almost sideways blocking traffic. Once that was out of the way traffic moved again. It ended up taking an hour to get home. Not bad really considering it usually takes 20-30 minutes.

Back to the city clearning the streets. The snow had stopped falling, hard, at about noon. There were light flurries most of the day, but nothing significant. Lots of time for the city to get out and clear the major roads by rush hour. Or not.

Because cars had been driving on the snow all day to get home early or get their kids from school. It was a slow roll from what I heard too. Some people taking 4+ hours just to get home. Well back to the packed snow. I saw THREE plows on the way home, in the city and two more on the Interstate. The three city trucks did NOT have their plows down. They were just driving and on the clear side of the road. What the hell is that? Actually one of them was behind me in traffic. It wouldn't have been too hard for it to drop its plow and scrape up some of that ice and slush that everyone was sliding and spinning on.

Perhaps I don't understand the dangers of plowing or whatever, but it made no sense. Even the trucks on the clear side could have been plowing the slush aside, since it'll turn to ice tonight. The clearer the roads the better. I won't pass judgement on the drivers, but it seemed pretty stupid to me.

Speaking of stupid. If the roads are overed with ice and traffic is dense should you be talking on the phone (without a headset) while running a yellow light turning the corner? I personally would have to say, NO!!! Oh yea he was driving an SUV.

There were a lot of people driving slower than they needed to, but I'd prefer that to people driving too fast, so I can't really complain about that. Even I didn't drive much faster than 45 mph on the Interstate.

Ok now for the pictures!

This first one is the view from up where I live, looking down the drive leading to my apartment. Look at the bunch of cars at the bottom. Someone couldn't get up the hill and slid sideway blocking the road. Luckly the other drive was clear. I got a good running start and just zipped up the hill. If I had slowed or stopped I might have had problems, but all in all it really wasn't too bad. I suspect the person who slid just let off on the gas and then lost traction. Oops.

Here is a ruler I stuck in a nice undisturbed patch of snow. Sorry for the blur, it was dark and with the flash, reflecting on the snow, the picture was washing out. As you can see we got 6 3/4 inches of snow. For other areas of the country that may not be much, but for Nashville, that's a lot, especially all in one day!

This last one is just an artsy photo. Hope ya like it. :)