Take me riding in the car, car; Take me riding in the car, car;

Take me riding in the car, car; I’ll take you riding in my car.

-Woody Guthrie

I remember those first blurry days at work.  I knew that I would have a long commute every day (1 hour and 37 minutes each way to be exact), but I thought I was going to luck out.  The weather was mild, and it was shaping up to be a mild winter; I even drove my old VW bug to work one day in December.

In January it started to snow, and it didn’t stop snowing until April on Easter Sunday; honestly, I’m not sure it’s done snowing yet.  It wasn’t that snow is unexpected; it’s just that there was so much of it, and so often:  57 days of measurable precipitation between Thanksgiving and Easter.  And it was so cold.  Not just the normal winter cold where it drops below zero for a week or two in January; but rather this was bone-chilling, sub-zero, freezing, the-coldest-February-on-record cold.

I drive 84 miles each way to work, and before Daylight Savings Time I spent a significant amount of time driving in the dark.  When it’s dark and snowing, my commuting time can more than double.  I drive an old Volvo, so I’m not worried too much about getting into an accident in the snow.  Even if that were to happen, it’s unlikely I would be hurt, and the car is paid for. But there were multiple days where the snow made me late for work, sometimes by as much as 3 hours.  On those days I would stay later at night, then drive home in the dark on snow-covered roads.

The first week of February, I needed to complete 3 days of incident command level 3 training.  I was sent across town to an off-site location, and I was the only person in my department participating in that round of training.  The first day of training we were hit by a blizzard, so I left an hour early.  There was already a foot of snow on the ground.  I normally don’t see many cars, but on that morning I counted the number of cars I saw on the road on one hand, and 3 of those cars were in the ditch with either a trooper or two truck along side of them.  I questioned my sanity, and I wondered as I got close to the city if the training had been canceled.  No one had contacted me, and since it was a 3-day event, I doubted that it could be rescheduled.  Besides, it would be attended by a broad group of first-responders: troopers, police, sheriffs, firemen, paramedics, EMTs, DOT workers – all folks who were not likely to stay home because of bad weather.

Finally,  3 hours later, I arrived at my destination. The parking lot was already full of cars that had been parked there long enough to accumulate another 4″ of snow on them.  I slipped into the back of the room and took a seat.  I was an hour late, but by this time we had accumulated 18″ of snow, and I felt like I deserved a medal for getting there.  After the next segment was finished, one of the retired policemen who was leading the class walked up to me and asked, “Are you aware that this class starts at 8:00, young lady?”  It took me a moment to realize that he was serious.  I told him, yes, I was aware of what time the class started, but that I had come from a long distance, and I wouldn’t be late again.

At the end of the day, I scraped another half foot of snow off the car and headed home. There was more traffic now on the highway, and unfortunately the painted lines were not visible through the snow.  Each driver seemed to be deciding where he wanted his lane to be, and at one point I could have reached out and touched the two cars I was sandwiched between.  I questioned my sanity again.  I thought about the policeman who scolded me, and i smiled.  It took and extra hour and a half to get home.

As crazy as it may seem, I don’t mind the drive.  Where I live, people routinely try to commute through suburbia into large urban centers on roads that weren’t constructed to be major thoroughfares.  Some of those folks spend as much time in the car as I do and drive less than half the distance in stop-and-go traffic.  I live in a rural area, and my commute is mostly rural.  I like to point out that I only see one traffic light in those 84 miles until I get very close to where I work, and there’s hardly any traffic.  Best of all, I have the pleasure of driving through some of the most beautiful areas of the northeast.

One Monday morning in March, I got an early start to work.  I was smiling thinking about how blessed I was and enjoying the ride.  Daylight Savings Time had started, and I was no longer driving in the dark.  That day it wasn’t snowing, and although it was still below freezing, the sun was shining.  I was thinking how lucky I was that no one commutes in the same direction as me.  I have time to pray the Rosary on the way to work, and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy on my ride home.  The old Volvo was much better on gas than I had anticipated.  And I was going to be early for work……After I had driven about 30 miles, I realized that I had left my laptop at home.  I sighed and turned around.