Earlier this week, the city of Pittsburgh got some icy weather and it got some drivers in trouble.
I am reminded of a story when we have a little wintry precipitation how this is really a "southern city." Two of my parent's best friends moved to the DC area from the Northeast. One morning Stu got up to go off to work and found himself behind a line of wary DC commuters unable to navigate their way up a hill. Disgusted with them, he put his car in park went up to the first car in the line, told the driver to move over - and drove the person to the top of the hill. He then walked back to the next driver and repeated this until he could get back in his car and be on his way.
Having grown up in an area that gets its fair share of snowfall (and for that matter, the NY area is getting hammered this winter) I like to think that I know what I am doing when driving in snow. My problem, like Stu, is everybody else, especially the brain dead drivers who are driving their SUVs like they're immune to the snow, or usually ice. I admit to taking a bit of perverse pleasure when I see an SUV off the road, especially if they have blown by me earlier.
On the day after Christmas, the Brave Astronaut clan saddled up for our trip to NY to visit with my father and family. The DC area was supposed to get some snow and we had decided we would wait and see what the morning brought. It turned out to be a few flurries - so we decided to go. Now we knew that NYC was in the bullseye for this storm, but I didn't expect that it would be a problem - that we could get ahead of it. I was wrong.
We made good time heading north until we reached the Delaware Memorial Bridge. That's when things went downhill fast. Conditions deteriorated and we found ourselves on snow covered roads with visibility falling fast and Mrs. BA getting increasingly anxious. I told her that I wanted to keep going as long as I felt comfortable. My comfort level bottomed out at exit 5 on the New Jersey Turnpike. We stopped at the James Fenimore Cooper rest area for a late lunch and determine our next move. You know those huge maps with phones to make hotel reservations in the rest areas? Yeah, me too, I never really looked that close at them. Well, on this day, we determined we had lots of hotel options at exit 5.
We got back in the car and head for the exit, about 10 miles up the turnpike. We walked into the Best Western in Mount Holly, NJ at about 3:15pm. We were one of the first. By about 7:00 in the evening the hotel was sold out - as were several of the others at that interchange (there were about 5 different hotels). The guy who checked us in told us of a Target up the road where we were able to get some provisions (food for dinner, some movies to amuse LBA and SoBA). The boys thought this was the best thing ever. They didn't go to sleep until almost 10:30 that night.
Meanwhile, we watched the snow pile up. And up. And up. We got back on the road about 10:30 the next morning and made it to my father's place in about 3 hours. Total trip time = about 27 hours. Total driving time = about 9 hours. What it should take? About 5 hours.
As I said when we got back home two days later . . . If I didn't have to do it, I wouldn't.
2 comments:
Exit 4 also has a myriad of hotels,if Casa PhillyGirl is closed, but Exit 5 is nice because you can go to Cracker Barrel...
Philly - don't think we didn't think about calling you.
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