home just in time
Originally uploaded by matt_leclair.
When: 7am, Feb 11, 2005
Who: just me
Coffee: New England Coffee Roasters
The town of Pembroke was dead when I woke up. I left the Rainbow at 7 and the snow was already falling. There'd been a lot of buzz about the coming storm the night before. The forecast said 100% chance of snow for thursday and friday. You just don't see that around here. There's never 100% chance of any sort of weather happening around here. It wasn't really supposed to start until the afternoon, though, so I guess they still got it wrong. I'd planned on grabbing breakfast at Poor Boys, then heading over to the school and working for a few hours before leaving. Even then I didn't know for sure that I'd leave because even when a huge storm is forecast here until it actually starts you really don't know it is going to. But when I left the Rainbow the snow was coming down and no cars were going by, and I went straight to the school instead of going to Poor Boys. The school was dark and locked up tight. They'd cancelled already. These are people who pride themselves on their insanity, er, toughness and ability to cope with whatever comes and their willingness to send their children to school no matter how apocalyptic the weather is.
So now I'm starting to get a little nervous. Still, no cars have gone by. Has something big and terrible happened? What should I do? Go back to the Rainbow and wait out the storm? Attempt to drive back? Two and a half hours on the road. Storms here always come from the southwest, the direction I'd be heading into, so I'd be travelling into worse weather, and I'd be driving through mountains, too. Fortunately, I knew the closer I got to Bangor, the better job they'd do at keeping the roads clean.
I steeled myself. Mom and Jessie and the Kitties would be snowbound unless I were home to dig them out. Plus the boredom of being stranded in a hotel room for two days would be intolerable. So I drove to the Mobil station to get the largest cup of coffee they had and a pair of Little Debbie granola bars for breakfast. It was a no substitute for Poor Boys, but time was of the essence. It was a stressful, white-knuckle kind of drive. The kind where you keep sipping at the coffee cup even though you know its been empty for fifteen minutes, just out of nervous reflex. I was so glad to pull in the yard!
No comments:
Post a Comment