The long and winding road

It started snowing today around noon or 12:30.

I left work early, at 1pm.

So did everyone else in the state.

What is normally a half-hour drive home took me… (wait for it)… six hours.
Six. Hours.

I could have driven to Maine in that time. And arrived in Maine. And cooked and eaten dinner.

Instead, the roads are clogged. People are ignoring traffic lights, intersections are snarled tangles of vehicles, where the only law is the strength of your will.

I creep along, at times sitting motionless for spans of 20 minutes or more.

I use my phone more than I have probably in the past year, calling people to break the monotony.

The longest wait is an hour or two, waiting for a hill to be plowed. No way forward, and back would just take me further from home. I didn’t even remember the hill was there, next to the Worcester Country Club, but with slippery snow, suddenly topology becomes much more important.

When the hill is finally cleared, I make my way up it. Along the side are a half-dozen cars, abandoned at various points trying to get up the hill. They are empty husks now, cold and dark and behind a wall of snow thrown by the plow. I crunch past the silent car graveyard.

Finally I get home. Mostly. Adam has barely gotten his car into the driveway. Our streets haven’t been plowed, so I gun it and almost make it onto the driveway, but have to stop short to avoid sideswiping Adam’s car.

A half-hour of shoveling and 50 pounds of sand later, at 7:30pm, I finally pull my car into the driveway and can go inside at last.

addendum:

The snowplow finally just came by and plowed our road. at 10pm.