{"id":826,"date":"2010-12-15T07:45:23","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T13:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=826"},"modified":"2010-12-15T07:45:23","modified_gmt":"2010-12-15T13:45:23","slug":"more-talk-about-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/12\/more-talk-about-the-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"More Talk About the Snow…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, 13 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

My son’s school was canceled today. Man, barely three months into his school career and already he gets a snow day.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember how many snow days my school had back in my early days of compulsory education, but I do remember they were a rare event in junior and senior high school.<\/p>\n

In late 1991, when I was in 11th grade, we got quite the snow storm. So much snow fell that I thought for sure I’d get to miss a few days of school. Alas, they only called one snow day. My mom would always respond to my glee regarding snow days by saying, “It doesn’t matter, you’ll just have to make it up at the end of the year,” which somehow didn’t really matter to me.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, 14 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, the normally unhelpful electronic signs that are posted at various points on the interstate actually came in handy today. As I was driving through Minnecrapolis, I saw this:<\/p>\n

35W\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 6 minutes<\/p>\n

280\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 29 minutes<\/p>\n

Since I was about four miles away from 35W, a drive time of 6 minutes isn’t really that bad. However, it was quite obvious that there was a terrible traffic build up somewhere in the 3 miles between 35W and highway 280.<\/p>\n

So I decided to take 35W south and take my chances on that highway. This was a good decision, as traffic was running pretty smoothly there.<\/p>\n

I could have taken the highway right out of the city and looped around to get home, but instead, I exited the highway and decided to take some regular city streets so that I could cross the river into St. Paul at a better spot (allowing me to run a couple of errands).<\/p>\n

Bad idea.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t that the traffic was bad, ’cause it wasn’t. It was the roads. Wow, they were terrible. At the first three intersections I came to, my car’s anti-lock breaks took effect, and I slid several feet in each case. At another intersection, I basically took my life in my hands, as the pile-up of snow was so high, I could not check for oncoming traffic, nor could any such traffic see me pulling out. I went verrry sloooowly, hoping that if there was a vehicle coming, they would have the decency to slow down for me (or at least just hit the front of my car).<\/p>\n

When I needed to make a left to get off Hiawatha (a pretty major street), I had to drive my car about 1mph in order to not lose any tires in monstrous potholes. When I came to a stop at the red arrow, my car’s tires we deep inside icy craters. When the green light came, I had to ‘rock’ my car in order to get going again (all while hurrying to make the left before the arrow changed back to red again).<\/p>\n

About a mile later, I was finally at the Mississippi River. As soon as I got on the bridge, the road conditions changed – for the better. I could go the speed limit, both lanes were cleared and (except for the entryway to my apartment’s parking lot), there were no snow pile-ups of dangerous size.<\/p>\n

Thank you, St. Paul, for doing such a great job.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Minneapolis, for not making me adjust my stereotype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, 13 December 2010 My son’s school was canceled today. Man, barely three months into his school career and already he gets a snow day. I don’t remember how many snow days my school had back in my early days of compulsory education, but I do remember they were a rare event in junior and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1159,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/1159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}