Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Land of Ice and Snow

For the first time since I moved here we have snow that did not melt by the end of the day. I took this picture on campus on Friday, and the snow in the picture is still there:

torchbearer with snow

Not surprisingly, the majority of the campus employees did not come to work that day. The place was a ghost town:

corner of volunteer and peyton manning

I know I spend a lot of time making fun of the Tennessee drivers and the "Oh my God I need milk and bread because I saw a snowflake!" mindset, but Thursday actually was a bad driving day. We were sent home about an hour early, and it took me that entire hour to make the normally fifteen minute drive to my apartment. The roads were slick and slushy, and the hills were terrible.

Then, overnight, it froze.

The main road that I take to work was fine, but the street that connects my parking lot to that road was solid, unsalted ice, with the added bonus of being uphill. For a minute I thought about calling in, but then I remembered that I was reared in the 315, so I warmed up the car, gunned it, and powered my way up the hill. Sure, there was a little skidding, but there wasn't another car anywhere since no one else was going to work, and I can steer out of a skid. Once I got to the main street I was good to go, and I enjoyed a peaceful and traffic-free ride to work.

Take that, Old Man Winter.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I made fun of the Southern overreaction to snow, too. But snow/ice in the South is no joke because the cities do absolutely nothing to clear the roads. There are no plows or salt trucks. So a little snow or ice ends up being quite a hazard thanks to negligence.

Anonymous said...

If you survived Dusharm's Driver Ed class, you can drive in anything :P