No Survivors

I've been given a mandate: "It's your turn to update." I'm reminded of a marquee sign near where my brother Nathan lives. I failed to notice the front of it on our way in a few weeks ago, but on the way out I caught the back-side: "So I did." Nathan informed me a few days later that the front read, "The boss told me to change the sign."

Something tells me that, were I to leave the entirety of this post as "I was told to update the blog, so I did," I'd be hosed. My access to this account would probably be removed, and I might come home in a few days to find the locks changed. (Incidentally, Zarah, after reading the above, is wondering at the possibility of getting the landlord to do such a thing.)

A few days ago, the parking lots of several local gas stations were turned into temporary hotels as a winter storm blew through. I'd like to be able to claim that it was the storm that shut down the freeway, leaving many stranded for the night. I'd like to believe that the storm was, in fact, bad enough to justify such discomfort.

It wasn't.

The truth of the matter is that Utah drivers are idiots. On the clearest days (when visibility is only inhibited by the smog that blankets Salt Lake Valley), you can watch the traffic websites light up like Christmas trees with various "incidents" and "accidents." The worst offenders tend to be mini vans, whose drivers seem to have been recruited to conduct physics experiments involving two masses occupying the same space at the same time. The space happens to be the lane in which I'm trying to drive, and the time happens to be when I'm in it.

When any kind of inclement weather occurs, that limited sense of sense becomes even more troubled. Even the lightest rain causes the lines on the roads to disappear entirely (I'd believe some sort of water-soluble paint were the cause if the lines weren't magically re-painted once the roads dried out again.) This makes the above physics experiments extremely difficult to conduct, as there is no longer any way for the drivers to determine when their minivans are about to occupy the same lane as someone else. I exaggerate a little: it is possible to determine the lane, but it takes what is evidently a very long time to do so.

Add to this the even more-limited visibility of a blizzard, and you get scientists on the road who spend so much time trying to figure out what to do that they spend so little time actually driving. For those of us who are trying to navigate the asphalt riverway without experimenting, there end up being many more obstacles to try to circumvent. Once out in the open, however, the driving isn't so much more difficult than on a clear day, and some of the lost time can be made up.

Once those empty bits of highway get filled up with scientists, however, there is nothing left to do but take the nearest exit, find the nearest parking lot, and hole in until enough idiots get off the highway that it's possible to continue onward.