Salt My Road First, if You Don’t Mind

By the time you read this, the high temperature is forecast to be in the upper 50s, maybe even 60.

But as I write this, I am snowed in. I’m somewhere that got more snow than we got at home.

Don’t get me wrong; I like a good snow. 

I do not particularly care for a good snow in March, but a couple of snow days a year is fine with me.

I don’t like being snowed in, however.

If I get a sudden urge for kumquats, I want to be able to cruise down to the grocery store and buy a sackful.

If I left something at the office, I need to have the ability to go get it.

Heck, if I want to burn up a teaspoon of gas in the Mighty Prius just for the sake of doing it, well, you know the rest.

Kim is the opposite. I think she could stay home for a week solid and not mind it. I wish I was more like that.

Snow days always lead to us having the conversation about whether the roads are slick or not.

We haven’t had that talk yet today, but it won’t be long. I’m feeling a kumquat craving coming on soon.

I think I may feel this way because of the blizzard of ’93.

Last weekend, incidentally, was the 29th anniversary of our most infamous snowstorm, in case you didn’t know it.

Anyway, we had a work trip to Gatlinburg scheduled for that weekend.

I knew we would cancel it. All the weather sources were talking about the severity of the storm.

I trust the weather forecast about as much as I trust Russia, but no one on television was giving us even the slightest chance to escape it.

I remember what one of the meteorologists said verbatim.

“This is going to be a bad one, folks.”

I don’t recall if the bosses were still undecided or not that morning. But a couple of people had already gone up, and they encouraged us to come on, because they said the roads were fine.

I remember thinking, they’re fine now, but they’re not going to be fine after the storm comes through.

We went.

And it snowed 26 inches in Gatlinburg.

Restaurants were running out of food because trucks couldn’t deliver. One night my side dish was potato chips.

Someone in the group went to a restaurant and bought up several orders to share.

I had some French fries. The next day, I reheated the leftover ones on the burner of the drip coffee maker. I have a picture.

Some of us crashed a couple’s wedding reception, probably just to get a handful of mixed nuts and some butter mints for dinner.

They had plenty of leftovers since their guests decided not to drive head-on into a generational weather event.

Here’s is a funny twist.

One night, a glacier the size of Vermont fell off of the fourth-story roof of the hotel and landed on my car, crushing the hood and cracking the windshield.

It was a convertible. I loved that car.

The trailblazers left on Monday. Kim and I didn’t get home until Tuesday night.

It makes me cold and hungry just thinking about it.

I wonder how we are on kumquats?