I’m doing a lot of scanning today, so I can take little breaks and do some occasional writing. Part of the reason it’s kind of slow is that it’s spring break, but another reason is that snowed a LOT over the weekend. Not many people are in. I was nice and cozy indoors, ripping the walls out of the bathroom, but we had a good four to six inches of snow piled up outside by the time I tried to get the tub out of the house.
My Fiancee had cleared a shovel-wide path up our front walk, but that wasn’t much of a problem. A bathtub on rollers makes a surprisingly effective snowplow. It’s heavy and smooth and once you get it in motion it’ll flatten pretty much anything in the way. It did a darn sight better job than the local road crews.
On the morning drive in to work we got to watch as the quality of plowing dropped. Quality and distance seen to have an inverse relationship… The the closer we got to Ann Arbor, the worse the roads were. On some street in the middle of the city there’s an impassable wall of snow marking the end point of the complex mathematical equation that the plow crews use to map their plan of attack.
Until I find that spot, I’ll have to settle for the current leader. At one point on the drive in a normally four lane road narrowed down to three lanes unexpectedly. Unfortunately, the person in the lane next to me wasn’t done using it yet. No injuries, no damage, no wreck, but their sudden swerve was enough to get the adrenaline flowing.
Now that I think about it, I’ve had a couple of close calls while driving lately. Last week I saw a guy make a turn into the wrong lane and come zipping straight toward me while he was fumbling for his sun visor. On Sunday we had to make a minor course adjustment to avoid a head-on collision with someone who decided that the “No Passing Zone” was optional. And this morning I hesitated at a stop sign long enough that I got to watch a panel van do a dainty pirouette through the intersection of Church Street and South University…
So what am I trying to say here? I dunno. Maybe “Drive Carefully” or “Watch Out For Snow.” Or possibly “The Ann Arbor Road Crews Would Do a Better Job If They Strapped a Bathtub to the Front of Their Snowplows” but that seems unlikely.