Escape from New York

My vacation ended yesterday as I made the long drive from upstate New York back to Tennessee, made even longer by the horrible lake-effect blizzard that they started having on Friday night. Grimly determined to get home, I loaded up the car, got up at 3 AM, and got ready to go even though the driveway wasn't plowed and I hate driving in any kind of weather at night.

My parents helpfully soothed my fear and stress by offering advice.

"You should wear your sweatshirt over that t-shirt while you're driving."

"Why?"

"So you already have something warm on when you run off the road."

"I'm kind of hoping not to run off the road."

"Right, of course. Now take this blanket, too, and put it on the backseat."

"Why?"

"In case it takes them a really long time to find you."

The fact that I couldn't see the road because nothing was plowed yet made it even more likely that I would run off, but I spent the entire time going 20 miles per hour, loudly praying to God, asking for divine intercession from all the dead people that I know that I thought might be on better terms with God than I am (thanks Bryan, Nanny Eve, and Poppy Harry; I did not ask for intercession from Nanny Maggy because I rode in the car with her a number of times while she was alive and that convinced me that she's not the person to request automotive intervention from), and white-knuckling the wheel so hard that I couldn't even take a hand off to have a sip of Diet Mountain Dew or to snap even one photo through the windshield.

Since I couldn't take a picture, I've drawn one instead:



The size of the snowflakes is not accurate to the size of the car.

There was so much snow that by the time I got to Pennsylvania, hours later, it was still clinging to the bumper of my car:



My mom says that the plows went by the house right after I left.