Road Conditions

When I moved to New England in July of this year, I had to do quite a bit of adjustment to my driving style. Rather than making eye contact to merge, I had to start fastidiously avoiding eye contact and instead barrel into traffic with no regard for life or vehicle. Another huge adjustment was lane demarcation. I came from Alabama. Home of dirt roads. But at least in Alabama when a road is paved, it has lanes clearly marked. Here you can be driving down a 4 lane road, and all of a sudden, there's no lane paint. Where's my lane?!?? Who knows. I've learned to just follow the car in front of me and hope for the best (the best being that they get hit first and I have time to slam on the brakes.) So far that strategy has worked...everything's cool.

But now it's snowing. Well, not actively snowing right this minute, but there is snow around. Meaning that the width of the roads has markedly decreased. There are still no lines telling you where your lane is, but now sometimes when you're in what would usually at least be functioning as a lane...all of a sudden you're looking at a 4 foot wall of snow. Merging becomes necessary at a moment's notice. It also doesn't help that cars parked on the side of the road are now jutting out 4 feet farther than usual and pedestrians are using the road as a sidewalk.

So now the roads are 10 feet wide trying to accommodate two cars and pedestrians who are dressed to climb Everest (not that I blame them, but it makes them extra-wide.) I kind of hate driving up here right now. And as I'm braving the elements earlier, I hear this on the radio: "tonight, lows in the single digits! And tomorrow, we could be getting another 1-3 inches of snow."

Bring it New England.