Indiana Winter Storm: A Personal Account

I have always been considered a fairly intelligent, book smart kind of person, even by people other than myself. Common sense, however, has never been my strong point. My mother used to call me the Absent Minded Professor, maybe she still does. Oh, I get the obvious ones. For instance, I have never once tried to save time by drying my hair while in the shower. But it's those little things...the ones where when it's all over and you're looking back you think, "hmm, it makes sense now"...those are the ones that get me.

When you add a dose of pride in with that lack of common sense, you tend to do all sorts of stupid things. I realized this while driving in the snow on my way to work this morning. You see, I had heard the warnings, I was watching the weather channel, and I knew it was slick. But I puffed out my chest and thought "I learned how to drive in New York. A measly four to five inches will be nothing compared to the lake effect snow I had there." I must say the chest puffing was impressive. So was the one-eighty I did getting on the interstate.

For those who don't know the different degrees of a circle, and three hundred sixty degree turn in a car will have you facing the same direction you started. A one hundred eighty degree turn will have you facing the other way. On an interstate, it will have you facing the wrong way...usually with other drivers heading straight for you, with some of those drivers driving big tractor trailers that will have your pathetic little four-banger car hanging as a hood ornament on their truck if you don't get out of their way.

Luckily, that traffic was far enough away that I didn't endanger anyone other than myself. And even I came out of it unscathed, and with a little more common sense to call my own for the next time. I was still close enough to the on-ramp that I used the acceleration lane to stay out of the way of oncoming traffic and to give myself a few moments of reflection. You see, in New York I had a pretty decent car with pretty decent tires. It's a lot easier to keep control of a vehicle when the only thing connecting your car to the road is tires that are in good shape. However, when your only connection is at least two balding tires with a slow leak, and those tires are connected to a road that has an icy snow mixture covering it, it tends to alter the circumstances a bit. This was my "aha!" moment. As in "Aha! Forget this...I should have stayed home". Unfortunately with the realization that I should have stayed home came the realization that I was on an interstate and the only way to (legally) head for home was to go to the next exit and turn around there. By the time I got to that exit, I would be closer to my job than I would be to my home, so it made more sense to just continue on to work. See, I'm already using that newly acquired dose of common sense. It wasn't a complete waste.