Catching up--mostly weather

It's Valentine's Day, and I'm in Kentucky. My wife is in Georgia. Do you see a problem here?

Fortunately I had a little foresight. I got her a little something while I was on the road last week, and gave it to her before I left (truck stops tend to have a fair selection of charming things in stock this time of year--they know what we really need out here...). And I did manage to get a phone call in before bedtime. So she knows I didn't forget. I may live.

Kentucky was nicer to drive through today than it was the last time I passed this way. Here is a "lost entry" from the last time I was here.
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(This post was originally written on 1/28.)
A picture-postcard morning.

It started snowing while I was asleep. Looks like there might be an inch on the ground now. Soft and fresh, crunching beneath my feet when I went up to the truck-stop store for my morning necessaries.*

It is SO pretty. I haven't seen snow like this since--I can't remember. Living and growing up in the South has certain shortcomings.

And it's still coming down. And I just might enjoy a lot more of it.

Somebody in the truck-stop store was saying the State Police are chasing people off the Interstate due to road conditions. Especially on a ten-mile stretch of it just south of--guess where.

I may talk about winter driving skills later on. When I've actually done some.
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*They used to call (ahem) sanitary facilities that, a long time ago. Sometimes I'm too literary for my own good.
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(From a little later the same day)
It's not fun driving through such beauty.

Looks like 6-12 inches of snow through much of Indiana. Vistas of white that make me wish I were an artist.

I'm not an artist. I'm a truck driver.

Which means my eyes are glued to the dirty ice, in ruts and slush piles, that covers the road in front of me. Or scanning warily for changes in the road ahead or the traffic around me. All this, and I can't look at it.
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...and a little later...
Half-plowed roads are weird. And frustrating. You come up to a car or truck that's just poking along. You swing out to pass.

You slow down.

The passing lane, you see, is in worse shape than the one you were in. If you're lucky, you might still be going a little faster than the guy in front of you. And if you're lucky, you might actually see where the left lane actually is.

Sigh.
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...and a little while after that...
Looks like Kentucky got hit both ways.

I step carefully as I move toward the restrooms at the Welcome Center on the Indiana-Kentucky border, soft slushy snow crunching beneath my feet.

Yes, I know that sounds contradictory. It bothers me, too.

So I look around at the trees, and see marvelous sculptures all around me. Every tree glitters, every twig sheathed in crystal, sparkling in the gray light.

Uh oh.

Suddenly the fairyland aspect of the hills for the last few dozen miles makes more sense. I am surrounded by the marks of that most beautiful of ugly things.

Ice storm.

Apparently this part of the country received a nice dose of freezing rain before the snow started. The ground is beautiful and white. The trees glitter in their clear sheaths of ice. For someone looking at it from a distance, it's wonderful.

I've been in the middle of them. Among the broken trees, and the downed power lines. I don't envy the people who live here. I'm just glad somebody got the roads more or less clear before I came through. Selfish of me...
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...and later still...
I'm back in the South.

I can tell. I just turned the engine off.

My truck's outside-air-temperature gauge rose something like ten degrees in an hour after I crossed the Tennessee border. It was above 40 crossing into Georgia. For someone who hasn't seen temperatures above 20 in a week, this is heady stuff.

I expect to sleep tonight with the truck turned off. And live. First time it's been silent for more than fifteen minutes this week.

(I mentioned the diesel-Jello problem, didn't I? Freezing to death is a disturbing thought, but trying to move a load with a jellied engine isn't too comforting either...)

Ah, well. Restarted the truck, warmed up the sleeper. Now to bed. Maybe more thought tomorrow.

G'night.
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All that was about two weeks ago.

Today it was springlike and pleasant, except for the miles and miles of road lined with broken-down trees. Branches littering the ground. Trunks partly split by major limbs breaking off. At least one tree that uprooted itself as it fell.

The ice storm certainly made its mark.

And again I saw them out in force--the modern heralds of weather-related disaster. Convoys of tree-surgeon trucks, five and ten and twenty at a time, with saws and cranes and cherry-pickers, ready to pull trees from unfortunate locations or re-string power cables (utility trucks look a lot like tree-surgeon trucks from across an interstate).

At one point a pickup with a closed trailer passed me, followed by another with a four-wheeler ATV in the bed. Both had the logo of a disaster aid group based out of South Carolina. A fair distance from Kentucky, that.

Hard times.