Thursday, January 7, 2010

The great blizzard of 2010

Okay, so it hasn't actually happened yet, but you wouldn't know that from the reaction locally.  A few snowflakes were briefly visible this afternoon, and the next thing I knew there was an e-mail from our Division chief turning us all loose from work 59 minutes early.  Guess she wanted to give us a little more time to break through those nonexistent drifts as we mushed our way home.  It is snowing in north Georgia, like up around Blue Ridge, but that's a long way from Atlanta. 

I shouldn't scoff.  I know people who rarely have to deal with snow have a hard time coping with it when the real thing actually hits.  I was lucky enough to take driver's ed in northern Wisconsin in January -- we practiced recovering from skids on a skating rink.  Literally.  We drove the driver's ed car on to the rink, spun donuts, bounced off snowbanks, and had a blast.  We also did slalom runs with the car on back streets in Hurley that hadn't gotten salted or sanded in awhile.  That early experience didn't keep me from parking various vehicles in snowbanks over the years, but at least I don't panic when it happens. 

In any case, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed we actually get enough slush tonight for tomorrow to turn into an administrative leave day.  If the kids around here can get a snow day just based on the promise of snow, it's only fair to let us adults blow off work, too, if some white stuff actually hits the ground.  

3 comments:

  1. we practiced recovering from skids on a skating rink.

    Cool, I learned as a kid on country roads and in parking lots, and later as a race car driver, good skill to have.

    I will admit though, I'm better with rear wheel drive rigs than with front wheel drive rigs, I've spun a few of them around.

    It's not bad here, not bad at all, compared to some of the rest of the country.

    41.2 degrees at the moment, and no snow. But I'm making a plow for the riding mower just in case. We get very little snow here but I'm getting to the age to where I don't want to shovel a 100 feet of driveway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wish I had that training before it snowed when I lived at the top of a hill in Washington state!

    Hope you get your snow day!

    ReplyDelete
  3. we're not used to this type of cold and if we had snow on top of it we'd all be freaked out..the worse we are used to is 40's and raniny..sigh*

    ReplyDelete

My space, my rules: play nice and keep it on topic.