Ooooorrrrr not…

Listen up, beautiful citizens of The Planet Ann Arbor. It’s   WINTER   and thees ees Meeecheeegan. I’m talking to y’all but I’m talking to one Lincoln Navigator driver in particular. When it is   WINTER   in Meecheegan, it is time to   sloooooowwwww down  !

I have probably the easiest semi-urban freeway commute in the country. It is exactly eight miles. I skirt around the south side of the planet on eastbound I94, hang a left right (kee-reist) at State, and drive down to Avis Park, where I have my pick of about a gazillion parking places EVERY day. The only time I couldn’t park in my chosen space was when some birders were there checking out the waterfowl in our ponds and that was okay with me.

If I don’t want to take the freeway, I can take surface roads and I sometimes do. If I have an errand at the Saline Rd. Meijer or if the weather is really awful. Of course, I could also work from home if the weather is really awful but I’ve grown fond of my loverly, dog-poopy cube and I am also Yooper Woman (dun dun dun) but I won’t go any farther down that ridiculous path.

This morning. It was snowing. Snow was sticking to the grass, the sidewalks and the side streets. The main roads were okay. They were mostly dry but there was a little moisture on them. Was it water? Was it ice? It was hard to tell. When I left The Landfill for work, I was indecisive about whether to hit the freeway or take the slow route. I figured the freeway would be okay except for those folks who insist on going 80-90 mph, which I regard as too fast for today’s conditions. But it does take a little longer on the surface roads and I had stuff to do at work.

Dum de dum de dum. I got to a decision point and headed over to the freeway. Now, if you have any experience with The Planet Ann Arbor at all, you will know that the Jackson Road entrance to eastbound I94 is not for the faint-of-heart driver. It is worse than a cloverleaf entrance if you can imagine that. You have to slow down to like 25 mph or something just before you have to merge. It’s bad enough when two or three huge trucks are screaming along in the right lane as you are trying to merge. My worst experience was when I had to merge behind a two-trailer gravel truck that took eons to accelerate to, like, about 40 mph…

I am pretty good at that entrance ramp nowadays. And then there was today. As soon as I turned onto the ramp, I realized that traffic on the freeway was at a standstill. I panicked a bit. I kind of pulled over toward the shoulder a bit. Can I back up? No I cannot. I could’ve probably backed up at some lonely little northern I75 entrance. Vanderbilt or Wolverine, maybe? Not this entrance. Multiple vee-hickles were coming along behing me. I was trapped.

In the end, it was not a very long slowdown. And I knew that right away because (after looking all over for police vee-hickles) I checked the map app on my iPhone and I could see from that where the accident was. And yes. It was a Lincoln Navigator and some other relatively fancy-looking late model Ford. It didn’t look like anyone was hurt or even much damage was done. But. You guys! It’s   WINTER  . So.   sloooooowwwww down  . Please. Please. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

Back to surfing wikileaks. If the site isn’t blocked. Again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.