To hear the media spin it, the Nor'easter that visited New England today was going to be a disaster of epic proportions. But to those of us actually living here in New England it was a normal part of winter.
While I did get up a little earlier than my usual time – about 15 minutes early – I still at my normal time. Or at least I attempted to.
I took the trusty F150 4X4 and started up The Manse's driveway, but only made it up about a third of the way before I realized I was going to have to do some shoveling. That took about 5 minutes as I only cleared enough to find the strips of sand still covering the driveway from last weekend's snow and made a path for the F150's wheels. After that it was up and out onto our road.
The trip to work was uneventful for the most part. The road conditions weren't great but that wasn't the biggest problem. It was the poor visibility. Along the 4 mile stretch of road that leads to one of the state highways visibility hovered between 100 feet and barely past the hood of the truck. It made for slow going. (At this point we had maybe 4 inches of very dry, fluffy snow.) What would normally be a 15 minute trip lasted 25. But I made it to work without incident.
At 2PM the word came from the lone manager at our lab: Go home.
After 10 minutes cleaning off the trusty F150 and digging out a bit from in front, I was on my way home. At least I had the foresight to call BeezleBub (he had the day off because school was closed) and asked him to fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower and clear the driveway. The last thing I wanted to do was slide down the drive way and slide into his Jeep or Twirl Girl's Blazer.
The trip home was another 25 minute drive with nary a vehicle to be seen. On my way home I counted about a half dozen snow plows, two cars and a pickup truck. One of those two cars and the pickup were off the side of the road about a mile and a half from The Manse. I stopped just long enough to see if either of them needed help. After being assured they were both alright and that a two truck had been called I continued on my way.
When I arrived at the top of our driveway, Twirl Girl was poised on her new snowboard preparing to slide down the semi-cleaned surface. She motioned me to go ahead and I did, pulling into the garage.
I was home.
BeezleBub had cleared enough of the driveway to allow the trusty F150 to get to the garage and no more. Not that I'm complaining since I know we'll have to go out again in a few hours and start all over again once the snow stops.
And so ends another run-of-the-mill Nor'easter, the media hype notwithstanding.