Kara & Michael’s Blog

Now that I’ve succesfully calmed down from my four-hour drive home from work yesterday, I think I can reasonably discuss it.

I work in Annapolis, MD.  It’s a pretty city, but it’s right on the bay and surrounded by all sorts of rivers and creeks – which means, of course, loads of bridges.

It flurried, iced and rained yesterday.  I figured traffic might take me an hour, as opposed to my normal 20-30 minute commute.  I’m not stupid, I knew there would be delays.  I sat at a light for 4 cycles before I could go, but traffic was fine after that point and I got onto a completely empty highway with zero problems.  Until an accident happened in front of me and I got stuck right before a tiny, icy overpass.  We sat there for three hours before a salt truck came along and the cops finally let us leave.

I had an eighth of a tank of gas.  After an hour, I realized we weren’t going anywhere soon (the accident had been cleared within 30 minutes) so I turned off my car.  I sat in the dark, teeth chattering, hungry since I had only consumed maybe 600 calories, desperately needing the toilet and going moderately crazy.

It got me thinking about survival situations.  People freak out when they’re stuck on the road and they don’t have any idea when they’ll be able to move.  It makes you less than human.  People began honking choruses to voice their desperation.  Hell, I would have been down for lighting a bonfire and roasting the people in the car next to me over a spit after a couple hours.  It sounds crazy, I know, but if you’ve ever been in a situation like that, you’ll understand.  Your brain goes from civilized to animal-ized. 

The cops sat in their cars right before the bridge, and I wondered why they didn’t attempt to slowly direct traffic.  If they let one car go at a time, chances are, they could have had traffic moving (albeit slowly) and people going less crazy.  I get the public safety thing, but one car with four lanes of traffic – even if it spins out, chances are there won’t be damage.  Why didn’t state troopers have salt or sand in their cars?  They could have laid it out across one or two lanes and had traffic, again, moving slowly.  It seemed to me that no one was prepared for the ice, and I didn’t really understand why they weren’t.  I got angry.  I frequently considered doing something to get arrested if it meant they would take me someplace warm.

I came in today to a lot of people who stayed later in the office, and got home reasonably quickly.  I guess I could have, should have done that.  And while I got home eventually, it took me a long, steaming shower to get my limbs back up to normal body temperature.

Today, my boss told me if it ices up again, she’s letting me out super-duper early, after I regaled her with my story about the four hour “drive” home.

This morning things are okay, though.  The squirrels are out, digging up nuts with hilariously drenched tails.  The trees are sodden with ice.  Traffic is moving and the walk to work wasn’t icy.  My terrapin friends in the tank in the lobby were sleeping, but Mr. Eel came out from his rocks to say hello.  He is awfully cute.

I vowed to myself I would never drive again, but what good would that do?  I just think there were probably better ways for the troopers and Maryland Department of Transportation to deal with the problems yesterday evening.