God Is My Copilot
Comrades,
Well, the moment I’ve been dreading finally arrived. D.C. had its first snowfall. You may remember that I wrote about the anticipation for this catastrophe a month or two ago, and now the dark night is upon us. As predicted, the media weathermen pounced on the possibility of snow with the type of feral glee one expects of a school of crazed piranha. By one o’clock we’d accumulated about 2 inches of snow. Now, that may seem paltry by outlander standards, but hereabouts that’s the psychological equivalent of a new Ice Age. I left work early, knowing that commute would already be something out of a Bosch nightmare, and was not disappointed.
For sheer terror, depravity and panic, I think one would have to go back to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow to get a true picture of my commute home. I’d already heard that there’d been several major accidents blocking my usual ways home. One at Shirley Highway and Route 7 was strategically placed, and would guarantee a backup that would stretch from Richmond to Delaware. I would need all my knowledge of the back roads and all my skills as a veteran Road Warrior to get home. Route 1 was already in terminal deadlock and I barely managed to escape to some side streets to avoid permanent entombment there as I left my office in Crystal City. I then faced the challenge of going through Arlandria, a community inhabited by illegal aliens. Under the best of times, this is a slow and treacherous tarpit; adding snow increases the hellishness by a factor of ten. Those inhabitants who can afford cars all buy the same type. I’m no expert, (some of you reading this would have to identify it for me), but it’s a very small foreign model, (I believe Japanese). Judging by its performance, it is powered by a used weed wacker. It is apparently required by law that they never possess more than one working tail light. The natives pile into it until it resembles nothing more than a circus clown car, and then they creak out into traffic at 5 mph. Well, the car sits so low that even our two inches of snow pile into the engine grill causing the miserable little things to slow down and stall. I found myself weaving through the carnage like some sort of maddened auto-pinball, leaving in my wake an army of stunned and unprepared men. The snow will take them all, and there’ll be a grim thaw come Spring…
From Arlandria I wended my way up through the old neighborhood to Bradlee and Fort Ward. Now the problem with this area is that the average age of the inhabitants is 127. They drive cars that are as big as battleships with a speed that would make continental drift look like a NASCAR event. Of course the snow merely increased the danger as I skidded around one dreadnaught after another in a Jutland-like exercise of evasion. I should point out that during this entire trip I saw no evidence of any treatment of the roads. Not one grain of sand, not one dollop of salt aided me in my sojourn. Clearly, local government now views snow as some sort of experiment in natural selection. Life belongs to the strong and the agile here in Northern Virginia!
By the time I got to North Springfield the strain was beginning to show. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, sweat poured from my brow as bloodshot eyes darted madly about – looking for the next obstacle – alert for the next death trap. The strain would have killed a lesser man, but I come from strong stock. As it was, luck was with me – traffic was light and I managed to fishtail my way home. I suspect most people were at the grocery stores; rioting and fighting over the last rolls of toilet paper and loaves of bread. At night I could see the gentle glow in the distance, as the now empty stores were torched by the losers in those contests. Famine will follow, but Linda and I are well stocked. Let the silly and the weak perish, Darwinism begins at home!
It is calm now, but as I type this I know that there are still ten more weeks of Winter. April and Spring are but a distant taunt, and there are predictions of a MAJOR storm this weekend. The culling will continue…
Well, the moment I’ve been dreading finally arrived. D.C. had its first snowfall. You may remember that I wrote about the anticipation for this catastrophe a month or two ago, and now the dark night is upon us. As predicted, the media weathermen pounced on the possibility of snow with the type of feral glee one expects of a school of crazed piranha. By one o’clock we’d accumulated about 2 inches of snow. Now, that may seem paltry by outlander standards, but hereabouts that’s the psychological equivalent of a new Ice Age. I left work early, knowing that commute would already be something out of a Bosch nightmare, and was not disappointed.
For sheer terror, depravity and panic, I think one would have to go back to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow to get a true picture of my commute home. I’d already heard that there’d been several major accidents blocking my usual ways home. One at Shirley Highway and Route 7 was strategically placed, and would guarantee a backup that would stretch from Richmond to Delaware. I would need all my knowledge of the back roads and all my skills as a veteran Road Warrior to get home. Route 1 was already in terminal deadlock and I barely managed to escape to some side streets to avoid permanent entombment there as I left my office in Crystal City. I then faced the challenge of going through Arlandria, a community inhabited by illegal aliens. Under the best of times, this is a slow and treacherous tarpit; adding snow increases the hellishness by a factor of ten. Those inhabitants who can afford cars all buy the same type. I’m no expert, (some of you reading this would have to identify it for me), but it’s a very small foreign model, (I believe Japanese). Judging by its performance, it is powered by a used weed wacker. It is apparently required by law that they never possess more than one working tail light. The natives pile into it until it resembles nothing more than a circus clown car, and then they creak out into traffic at 5 mph. Well, the car sits so low that even our two inches of snow pile into the engine grill causing the miserable little things to slow down and stall. I found myself weaving through the carnage like some sort of maddened auto-pinball, leaving in my wake an army of stunned and unprepared men. The snow will take them all, and there’ll be a grim thaw come Spring…
From Arlandria I wended my way up through the old neighborhood to Bradlee and Fort Ward. Now the problem with this area is that the average age of the inhabitants is 127. They drive cars that are as big as battleships with a speed that would make continental drift look like a NASCAR event. Of course the snow merely increased the danger as I skidded around one dreadnaught after another in a Jutland-like exercise of evasion. I should point out that during this entire trip I saw no evidence of any treatment of the roads. Not one grain of sand, not one dollop of salt aided me in my sojourn. Clearly, local government now views snow as some sort of experiment in natural selection. Life belongs to the strong and the agile here in Northern Virginia!
By the time I got to North Springfield the strain was beginning to show. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, sweat poured from my brow as bloodshot eyes darted madly about – looking for the next obstacle – alert for the next death trap. The strain would have killed a lesser man, but I come from strong stock. As it was, luck was with me – traffic was light and I managed to fishtail my way home. I suspect most people were at the grocery stores; rioting and fighting over the last rolls of toilet paper and loaves of bread. At night I could see the gentle glow in the distance, as the now empty stores were torched by the losers in those contests. Famine will follow, but Linda and I are well stocked. Let the silly and the weak perish, Darwinism begins at home!
It is calm now, but as I type this I know that there are still ten more weeks of Winter. April and Spring are but a distant taunt, and there are predictions of a MAJOR storm this weekend. The culling will continue…
posted by mendip at
8:35 AM
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