We had a longstanding appointment scheduled for this afternoon in Atlanta. I called yesterday to see if the appointment was still on, but got no answer. I called today and they said they'd move the appointment forward three hours. Still, that had us driving home in the afternoon. Join me below for the fun.
As we left the appointment, I could see that cars were crawling along the main road. We joined the crush and inched along in stop and go traffic. We finally got past the heavy traffic, but cars continued to crawl. I carefully pulled around the slower cars and cautiously gained some speed, nothing fancy though. I realized that people were driving much slower than the conditions allowed, and most frustrating of all, they had a tendency to brake just before the crest of a hill even though there was no car in front of them.
I saw a few cars along the way, abandoned with their emergency flashers on. We finally made it to the interstate and there, too, cars were crawling along. Traffic was heavy for a while, but then thinned, but still the cars crawled, emergency flashers going. One car tried a spiffy sports cars maneuver, but he used too much power and turned the wheel too sharply so he went into a prolonged skid before he got back under control.
I did see a few drivers with confidence moving along the far left lanes at a reasonable speed. I finally managed to find a break in the traffic where I could carefully accelerate. Occasionally someone else would pull into the lane in front of me and just poke along. I think they wanted to see no cars in their way. I carefully jockeyed around these obstacles, cursing the people riding slowly in the left lane inevitably braking at the crest of a hill.
All the stores and most fast food places are closed. Krispy Kreme is open and has HOT DONUTS, and of course Waffle House is open. Other than that, there's just horrible traffic for miles and miles.
As I neared home I decided to risk a secondary road, curves, hills and all. It was the best part of my trip. I went 5 MPH under the speed limit just to be careful, but that was faster than I'd seen most people going anywhere. I negotiated a curve and a steep hill with no problems. I did see another car abandoned for no apparent reason, but soon I was driving down the small hill above our driveway, stopping at the stop sign and pulling into the drive.
The TV news people are telling people to drive very slowly with their emergency flashers going on the interstates. The governor has declared a state of emergency. And the snow?. It still hasn't completely covered the grass. It's wet and slushy, but not too bad, and we're expecting temperatures in the upper 50s with rain for this weekend although tomorrow morning temps will be in the teens. They sure know how to get the most out of a little snow down here.