Winged Minion

This is not what I should be doing right now. I've got to get ready for work, and with company coming in from out of town this evening I should be using what little extra time I have to be cleaning, if not exercising or something. But when I opened a new tab on my browser (morning coffee email ritual) I realized that it has been so long since I've visited that the little picture of this window was no longer a one click option of most visited sites. While it's not like I haven't neglected you in the past, dear reader, I have, but just now that's not true. In fact, I have been on vacation and am currently working on a travelogue of my adventures, my longest post to date here in the Nightmare. I don't really know what arrogance leads me to believe anybody would be interested in how I spent my fall vacation, but I hope you enjoy it when finished. In the meantime I leave you short description of something beautiful that happened during the nightmare.

I find it difficult to distinguish between what I've told you in these pages, and what I've told others in conversation, but surely I've mentioned Ionic Stone, the limestone mill that is literally out in the woods? Yes, good. So, I like going out there but it is stressful driving a big truck through those conditions. The main hazard is oncoming traffic. A lot of people live out there and they don't expect to encounter a large vehicle taking up the entire road. But I have to make sure that the trailer tandems don't fall into that stream rounding corners, or that there's no large limb hanging into my space, not to mention deer. So, with senses on high alert I snapped to attention when I detected movement ahead, on the edge of the road; close too, about 15 feet ahead. "Wha's dat?"

It was a large Red Shouldered Hawk. It rose into the air presenting me with a view of its tawny breast and creamy wings, beating powerfully, then flew across right in front of me. It then came to rest on a tree limb giving me a view of its backside as it did so, with its banded tail splayed out and the wings beating as a brake, I imagine. It turned its head and looked at me, then soared off into the woods in one fluid motion. I mean, how lovely is that? It was a real National Geographic moment.

Stay tuned.

 

Slippery Weather

Indianapolis really dropped the ball yesterday. I'm not sure if it was the forecaster's fault, or the city administration's. Actually we'd better widen that to the entire state's because I heard of, and saw accidents outside of Marion county. It was a light freezing rain. Nothing was pretreated, not even bridges and ramps. It played havoc, causing hundreds of accidents, none of which I was involved in, thank goodness.

I probably could have saved myself a huge headache just by starting earlier. I didn't have to slow down, and see cars off the road here and there until Waverly, just south of Indy. Then I was able to get onto 465 before everything gummed up while someone who left shortly after me said that he first ran into trouble in Martinsville, and the ramp to 465 was backed up for more than a mile onto 37. I'd actually wished that I could have started earlier, so that I could have avoided Indianapolis at the 7:00 AM rush hour, but had to do a quick turn around from the day before and wasn't legally able to.

As it was it took me about three hours to get around 465 to the north side. It was a nightmare! Shadeland Avenue veers off from 465 in the south end and reconnects with it just before the I 69 junction. I called out on the CB to find out what Shadeland was like but got no reply. "What the hell, it can't be worse than this," I reasoned, and made my escape. That turned out to be a really good plan, until I came to the unannounced construction that had two of the three lanes closed! I may have saved some time, but I'll never know for sure. I was expecting to rejoin the madness when I got back to the freeway but things were flowing smoothly.

Then, on the return trip I got to Indy right at 5:00, which is always fun. I would have been earlier if it weren't for the morning's delay. I'd been listening to WFYI since somewhere south of Kokomo and had heard a couple of traffic reports, but nothing to alarm me. It wasn't until I was already heading around the east side that they reported the accident at 465 and 65. Going through the city center at that hour wasn't advisable and even if I did I'd have to get onto 465 from 65 and might still run into the backup, not to mention the construction down there. No way around it. I found myself inching along just like I had that morning, only going in the opposite direction, a lot more tired and far less patient.

So I started this morning thinking that I was tired of winter already and it wasn't even here yet. But as I got to driving in the grey of an overcast dawn, with a light dusting of snow on the ground and trees there was something heartwarming about it all. I could see the lights of the cars moving along Walnut Street through the bare trees, and the strobe atop a school bus. Then it was corn stubble in straight rows shakily drawn bristling out of the powdered sugar snow of a hummocky field. Then I was in town, not so cool, but later, in the woods north of Spenser I was grooving again. It's not really all so bad. Later in the day while I was playing in the mud at one of the quarries the sun even came out.