I only drove 26 miles today but I feel like I drove to the yooperland and back. Except that driving to the yooperland (but maybe not back) probably would’ve been a lot less stressful. Well, that is if the traffic wasn’t too crazy and there wasn’t any snow… Or deer… Or tornadoes…

We are down to one vee-hickle for the week. Why? Because the loverly Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen is in the body shop getting the driver’s side front quarter panel or whatever it is replaced. So we are down to sharing the possibly even more loverly little Ninja. The GG works five miles more or less to the northeast and I work eight miles away down south of the airport. Bus service over to that darn EPA is possible but tortuous. The closest bus to my work drops me off about a mile away leaving me with a walk down a jam-packed high-speed two lane highway with no sidewalks. That is, the bus WOULD drop me off there if I TOOK the bus (South State, if you know Ann Arbor). No thank you. I could certainly telecommute but I didn’t really want to. I have done that enough lately and it’s very likely I’ll be doing it again in the not-too-distant future.

So. I got up at 0-skunk-30 and took my walk, strategically changing my usual route so that I’d be walking up Miller as the GG was driving *down* Miller toward work so he could pick me up, which he did. We drove over to that darn EPA and he bailed out and then I drove home. So far so good! Completely dry pavement and didn’t even hit too many red lights. Or pedestrians approaching crosswalks.

Now, if I had only left for work when I *wanted* too, the next bit of ugliness wouldn’t have happened. But this morning was sort of a faaaar drill and I couldn’t find my *socks* etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam and so I left the Landfill 20 minutes later than I wanted to. Little did I know what a mistake that was…

It seemed okay when I finally got out the door, threw two bags of garbage into the cart, and schlepped my work laptop and lunch and stuff into the Ninja. I mean, everything was still dry and there was nothing coming out of the sky. But then. I got to the infamous Jackson/Maple intersection and what was this? Huge clumps of snow coming down. Somebody I follow on Twitter called them beachball-sized and that wasn’t too much of an exaggeration. The pavement was still dry but I had a rather ominous premonition and abandoned my original plan to take my performance taaaarred vee-hickle onto the I94 18-wheel Slogway. Which was a good thing because man oh man this snow came down fast and heavy and apparently by the time I finally slithered my way to work, the freeways were all parking lots. My own commute was ugly but ultimately uneventful and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally parked in my very own parking place next to my loverly Canada Goose-laden pond.

But what the heck? This is Meeeecheeeegan and if you don’t like the weather, you wait five minutes. Or maybe more like three hours in this case but, by this afternoon, the snow had turned to rain and the temperature was around 40 and the snow disappeared and I did my commute home on the I94 18-wheel Slogway and it was all good. Until I got off at the Jackson Road exit. And the damn left turn signal was having one of its sporadic little spells of letting four or five vee-hickles through at a time and so I had to wait at least four looonnnnnggg cycles to make a frickin’ left turn.

And so, just as I arrived at the Landfill, the GG sent me a text: “WhenYaGonnaGitMe?” Sigh. I saddled up the Ninja *again* and wended my way through the Planet Ann Arbor surface street rush hour traffic to Plymouth Road. And back.

I am taaaarrrrred. We are having a ‘hattan. It is Fat Tuesday and I don’t have any special Mardi Gras meal but I DOOOOOOO have mardi gras beads. Except that Froggy and Green Guy are wearing them all (and I think they are into the derned laundry detergent because I am hearing all kinds of disgusting adolescent boy-type burping and farting noises and the ensuing raucous laughter). But wait a minute? When have I *ever* celebrated Fat Tuesday? Maybe I will have to add that date to my list of “Holidays to Celebrate Just for Fun Even Though They Have Nothing To Do With My Own Cultural Heritage”. Because life is short and then you die and let’s have fun while we’re here.

Anyway, this double commute is getting old and I have only done it for one blasted day. We’ll see how long I last.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 7:21 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.