Home To Old Man Winter
I recently wrote about our drive home from Florida and the crazy traffic that we dealt with from Florida through Georgia resulting from the mass exodus of snowbirds flocking home for the season. I was prepared for the long drive and the number of miles we had to travel. I was prepared to hit traffic but was expecting that to occur in the northeast not the southeast. I was prepared for the road trip blues of hours of wind shield time with nothing but gas stops, bathroom breaks, meals on the fly and sleeping in hotels. I made sure I dressed comfortably with shorts, golf shirts and sneakers to make the long ride more tolerable. Cathy and I even had a book on CD by James Patterson that definitely helped pass the time. What I was not ready for was coming home to old man winter.
This past winter was pretty mild with most of the snow coming early in the season and some scattered cold days here and there. But overall it was a good winter for the record books. That all changed in April at least early April. How this mattered is when we left FL on April 1st it was 75 degrees. As we drove north I knew there would be a drop in temperature but it had been mild up north and I had a jacket in the vehicle just in case so I was all set. Our first day on the road got us to the South Carolina border so the weather was still warm. The next day we made it all the way to just outside Baltimore and stopped for the night. That morning at breakfast people were talking about the snow and ice storm hitting NY and CT. That was not what I wanted to hear.
After breakfast we visited Cathy’s aunt in the hospital in downtown Baltimore. It was great to see her aunt but the shocker was when we got out of the vehicle it was 40 degrees with gale force winds. Remember all I had was shorts, golf shirts, sneakers and a light jacket. Well Cathy was prepared with her jeans and North Face coat. She was fine. I froze my butt off. After our hospital visit we were on the road again for the last leg of our trip and heading back to the northeast. We stopped on the Jersey turnpike for gas, food and a bathroom break. It was painful to be outside. Granted I am a bit of baby when it comes to the cold but this was old man winter with a mean wind. The ice and snow subsided for the last part of the drive and we made it home on Sunday April 3rd.
When I woke Monday morning to go back to the office I was welcomed by a layer of ice and snow. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was freezing rain all day and when I went to leave the office at the end of the day my car looked like a giant ice cube in the parking lot. I had to chop my way into the car to get my ice scraper to work on the half inch of ice over the entire car. I was not a happy camper and just two days earlier I was in 75-degree weather.
At least I had a coat and gloves…take that old man winter.
Until the Next Tom’s take…
