Winter BITES: I hate it.

Bottom line: I am on a 2-hour delay today for school. We've been out of school since Wednesday, December 5th, and the snow just keeps on coming. We have about 1-3 inches of snow, but what's worse is that more came down last night. We only have just a little bit of snow (1-3 inches is "nothing" when you stop and think what other states get, and I'd REALLY hate living in upstate New York, for instance. So, a little fluff of snow is NO BIG DEAL (and if it were only snow, I could handle it, easy-peasey), but what makes this such a "gripe" is that there's ICE underneath this stuff. I dread going out today because I fear a repeat of my outing on Wednesday.

I had an 8:30 doctor's appointment on Wednesday morning, and I slid all the way into town. Black ice is INVISIBLE. You don't even know it's there until you're already on it, and then, it's too late. All you can do is to try to steer through the situation. If the car pulls in one direction - turn to the opposite direction - and pray, pray, pray. Wednesday stunk. I was on a three-lane highway (US 35, US 23, and US 50 all converge at this location), and I was doing, at most, maybe 40 mph, but I think I was actually doing closer to 30 mph, which is SLOW for a US route, but you have to drive according to road conditions, so that was the best that could be done. Then, suddenly, there it was: Andrea, Evey, and I were going over a bridge in the far left lane when a fully loaded semi came up on us out of nowhere (thankfully it was in the middle lane). The draft from the semi gave us a really nasty nudge right nearly into a a concrete bridge rail to my left, and there was nowhere to go! The semi was moving along at nearly 60 mph, directly to my right, and there I was, on a solid sheet of ice drifting to the concrete railing of this bridge. All I could do was take my foot off the pedals and steer through it and pray. Pray like the dickens! You never, ever, hit the brakes when you are on ice. Finally, I got through it, but I could feel the sliding, and I was sure that I was gonna hit either the bridge (which would have been really bad) or the fully loaded moving semi (which would have been far worse). God pulled me through that one (Thank you, God). Andrea was scared to half to death (as I was, but I had to remain calm), and Evey, thankfully, had no idea what was going on.

So, I'm hoping they close school today, too. John just called me a little while ago - from a ditch not more than 1/2-mile from my house. He had slid when he was only doing about 20 mph (he said that's all he could do since it's a solid sheet of ice out there - at least on secondary roadways). I thought he had called me so I could call AAA's Emergency Road Service for him. He said his car had spun around, twice, and pointed him back in this direction, and right into the ditch he went. He finally got out of it by kicking in the 4-wheel drive, but it took him about 45 minutes to get to work when it usually takes him not more than 15.

WINTER BITES. I hate it.