Friday, January 21, 2005

Home Home Home

I'm home. I worked very hard, thirteen or fourteen hours/day for the first three days, and then a more normal schedule yesterday. I missed my flight out this morning, but was able to get home only a few hours later flying standby through DFW. I wanted to be sure to get the heck out of Chicago today if at all possible, because they are expecting 7-10 inches of snow in the next 24 hours, and nobody's leaving (at least by plane) once that hits. I figured if I could get to DFW, I'd be able to make it home tomorrow at the latest. As it was, I was able to get out on the first two flights from both places.

It was cold, and it snowed. I fell asleep on the plane during the flight there, and woke up about an hour into the trip, over "flyover country." Everything below had been green/brown when I went to sleep, but when I woke up looking out the window, all I could see was snow. I literally gasped. I realized that I hadn't seen real snow in about four years.

Those of you who live in northerly climes are probably rolling your eyes at my reaction to all this. After all, I am a Yankee. I have been through my share of Winter Weather. But I seem to have forgotten, so it's all a surprise again.

My car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee with 4WD. I was glad for that, as I drove through blowing snow a lot. I learned to drive in Ohio, and drove there for many years, but I think I would not have handled driving well in my hockey puck of a Cavalier after all these years. I was driving back to my hotel Wednesday night through horizontal blowing snow on I-80, and the thought occurred to me that the members of the Martin and Willie Handcart companies would probably have been grateful to have their only fear be that of their SUV rolling over.

Yesterday, as I was driving in NW Indiana, with a gray snow sky, flat landscape, wet slippery roads, and flurries melting and drying into dusty specks on my windshield, I experience a strange feeling, though...homesickness.

3 Comments:

Blogger Phoebe said...

Woosh, woman -- you MADE it!! You can just do the victory dance and then crash all weekend with every right to feel you deserved it. Heck, I'll do the victory dance now ...

(watch dem toes tap!) :)

Glad you made it.

1/21/2005 08:31:00 PM  
Blogger Miranda said...

You're back! And you survived the crappy weather out here!

1/21/2005 08:48:00 PM  
Blogger Trail Seeker said...

I was impressed with the way Ohioans kept going through the thick of a winter storm, if we got that and we dared travel, we would of been able to count cars in the ditch, well, untill we ended up there ourselves.

1/21/2005 09:15:00 PM  

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