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.