Rolling, rolling, rolling

It's the second day of the ice storm of 2011, the storm that left 2-3 inches of solid ice on all driving surfaces and temperatures in the single digits. It's still not as bad as the Oklahoma blizzard of 2009, the difference being this time I am comfortably at home (except for needing Bob Cratchit gloves.)

And now I have to admit to the downside of working at home. Everybody else had a "snow day" yesterday. For Ricky, Kelly, Brian and Wiley there was no school, no jobs, just pajamas (although Kelly had to dress twice as her delayed start became a more delayed start and finally no start at all). Meanwhile, I completed several tax returns and two loads of laundry and even made it to the local close-out store for its 8:00 am opening (Hunter ceiling fans at half price!) Ricky and I made it to the hockey game last night in downtown Dallas. The highways were fairly clear, unlike all the side streets and parking lots. The friends we went with drove us in their big, comfy, 4-wheel drive SUV. We had our choice of seating in the arena.

Today more businesses are open, but no schools. The temperature is hovering around 10 degrees, with scheduled power outages to keep up with demand. The electric company doesn't like the term "rolling blackout." We've had two outages so far this morning, a little tough on computers and internet, so I'm now getting a bit of a snow day.

I always wonder, in a weather event like this, if the world can get by with delayed starts and temporary closings every now and then, why don't we schedule them more often?

At my daughter's new job, she usually finishes the day's assignment in about three quarters of the allotted time. Most jobs and activities are replete with scheduled breaks and time off and cushions for delays and allowances for the lowest common denominator.

Instead, I suggest we all protest and demand a 30 or 35 hour work week.

Work hard, play hard! My favorite motto.

Another day, another five hundred miles

The boys are off again today, visiting college campuses. Up until a week ago, Wiley had only seen one college campus, that of our alma mater Rice University. Before he narrows down his choices next year, we wanted him to get a feel for campuses of different sizes.

Last week, they went north, visiting Austin College in Sherman, Texas and the University of Oklahoma in Norman. They were gone about twelve hours, covered about 500 miles.

Today will be the same, except they've headed south - first to Baylor University in Waco, then to Southwestern University in Georgetown and finally the University of Texas at Austin.

A five hundred mile day trip is no big deal for a Texan. Throw some cold drinks in the cooler and head out. I have often gone up to see my parents for a day - three and a half hours each way. On other family trips, we will routinely drive 1,000 miles in a day, leaving Orlando or Tucson or Keystone at 6:00 am and sleeping in our own beds that same night.

One summer day, when the kids were a lot younger, I made the six hour round trip to Abilene to pick up kids at camp, then made another two hour round trip to pick up another child at a different camp, then headed north with the whole family to spend the weekend with my folks.

That's what you do if you live in the south - a land of vast open space and scarce urban areas.

When Ricky and I were newlyweds living in Chicago, our best friends had family in Kalamazoo, Michigan, about 150 miles away. They would plan their annual trip months ahead of time, it was such a long way to them. That was the first time I really understood cultural differences.

In England last summer, I visited with a woman on the train. She was quite smug about the British rail system, with its superiority to transportation in the United States. I agreed with her, to the extent you have towns, existing for centuries, every five or ten miles. Our country is quite young and nowhere near as densely populated. It will be centuries more before it is both cost and environmentally effective to build transportation infrastructure outside the packed cities. Give us some time, we'll get there.

I wish our current government leaders would realize that. Instead, we're led by a man who has lived either on a small island or in a large city. For the past five years, he has only traveled locally by cab or limousine, his driving limited to golf carts. He should take a look at a map. His concept of efficient transportation does not apply to the majority of us Americans, sprawled across thousands of miles, who want to remain independent, able to transfer at will from Point A to Point B.

That's why I've started a slush fund. At the first hint of the phaseout of SUV's, I'm stockpiling three of them.

491

After weeks of careful planning and last minute adjustments, Christmas week was planned out perfectly. You can guess how this story is going to end up.

On Sunday, the 20th, Ricky's out-of-state sister arrived with her husband for supper and an overnight visit. Ricky's out-of-town brother and family showed up for the same period of time and his in-town sister and local family joined us for supper also. It was a nice Christmas time visit that allowed all the siblings to visit their declining mother, who is seeing her last holiday.

Then the plan was for us to go up to my family in Oklahoma before Christmas, our visits always worked around when my brother has custody of his daughter. We and the boys would go up on the morning of the 23rd, with the other three kids, all adults, driving up together that evening. After a good family visit, we would all leave the next afternoon in time to attend our Christmas Eve church service back in Texas. My married kids were then going to spend the night at our house and we would all wake up together Christmas morning. I couldn't believe how the stars had aligned to allow this to happen.

Our schedule went as planned until it was time to leave Oklahoma. As we threw our stuff in the cars, the Blizzard of '09 stormed in. Hoping it wouldn't be that bad, we took off, making it to the top of my parents' driveway. We sat there, stunned by the conditions. The windshield wipers could not keep up. With fifty mile per hour winds there was near zero visibility and concern that the smaller Hyundai could be blown off the slick roads. (We, of course, were in our bigger SUV.) After several cell phone conversations between the cars, we reluctantly concluded that road conditions were unsafe and we would spend an extra night in Oklahoma.

It was the right call. Oklahoma received a record 14 inch snowfall over the next few hours and I later read there were ten traffic deaths and hundreds of people stranded for hours and hours on Christmas Eve.

(Wiley and I went sledding in the blowing snow.)

My son-in-law's family began adjusting their scheduled plans and we all hunkered down to wait out the storm, hoping to get out later in the day, but of course the terrible weather conditions did not abate until late in the evening.

Christmas morning was bright and clear, the roads buried in ice and snow. Although all interstate highways in Oklahoma were officially closed, we determinedly left. Unfortunately, we had not left our cars at the top of the driveway, so it took an extra thirty minutes of pushing and pulling to get out again.

You can see the slope of the driveway, which becomes steeper further along.

We started south, I driving the Tahoe and Eddie driving their car. Brian decided to count the abandoned vehicles and set the "over/under" at 130 for how many we would see before getting to the Texas state line. Ricky and I laughed, so Brian adjusted it up to 230. We still took the "over."

The trip, all on I-35, was precarious, requiring detours around closed ramps and empty vehicles. There was about six inches of snow and ice pack on the road most of the drive. About three hours in, Eddie caught an edge and ended up off the road in the median.

Ricky and Brian ran back. Wiley and I drove ahead to the next exit so we could double back and come up behind. By the time we got there, a van of people had pulled over to help. Four big guys joined the effort and finally they all were able to push the car back onto the road without getting hit by oncoming traffic. (One of the girls in the van was videotaping the rescue. Maybe we're on you-tube somewhere. They said we were the 10th car they had helped.)

By the time we got to Texas we had counted 461 vehicles off the road. We saw semi's, trucks, vans and cars, all abandoned to the ice. We saw cars stacked together, in pieces, facing the wrong direction, smashed through fences, some even burned. Lindsay and Eddie objected to their inclusion in the count, but if we hadn't counted them, we would have counted double points for the snow plow in a ditch. There were 30 more cars abandoned in north Texas. Our drive normally takes a little over three hours. This time it took six.

But all's well that ends well. We adjourned to our respective homes for hot showers and clean clothes. The men, having been in tennis shoes and short socks during all the car pushing, appreciated getting dry and warm. We reconvened for supper of homemade tamales, crab cakes and steak. Santa came while the kids had dessert in the kitchen and we had a wonderful family evening, Eddie's family having graciously delayed their Christmas traveling until the next morning.

Next year my motto will be to make it simpler. When you have older kids, with plans of their own, you can not do it all in such a compressed time frame. We have had the same traditions for about twenty-five years. Now it's time to shake them up. It will be great. It already is.

For those of you reading this, I hope your holiday season has been and continues to be safe and merry.

On the Road Again

Well, the wagon train is heading out this weekend to southwestern Oklahoma for a family reunion. My brother and niece are flying in from Arizona, so there will be nine in my caravan from north Texas. I'll be driving the Tahoe loaded with people, food, ice, dog crate, games, fishing tackle, tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses, etc. Think of the Clampetts headed to Beverly Hills and you have the picture.

The weekend should provide a plethora of postings next week.

Some topics that are likely to come up.....

What happens when you mix grandparents and hand grenades? (Really.)

How do you allocate tent space when there are an old married couple, a young married couple, an adult daughter and son and a teenage son? There will be two tents.

Who will be best at "Piggy Wants a Motion?"

What can you do with a pontoon boat on a large farm pond?

What will a small, arrogant dog do when she meets very large cows?

How does that whole Pictionary/dominos/cards thing work out when you have a group ranging from teenagers to "old" people, and you're playing the games by lamplight?

How many stars can you see on a September night when you're in the dark in the country?

Good times coming.

Heartland XXXpress

On Friday I went to pick up my mom and two of her friends at the train station on the west side of town. The three of them had taken the Heartland Flyer train from Oklahoma to Texas to visit their respective children in various parts of the metro area. I was picking them all up and taking the two extra ladies to a rendezvous point to meet their rides.

My daughter, eager to see her granny, came with me. She had wanted to bring her Cosmo magazine to look through on the way. I said "no, I don't think little old ladies will want to see you with that magazine and its various sketchy (sex) items listed on the cover." My daughter didn't really see the point, but agreed to leave the magazine behind.

The three friends, with an average age over seventy-five, arrived on time and we got them and their bags stowed away in my SUV. (I have to work in the usefulness of my car.) When asked if they had a good trip, they all said yes and giggled.

It seems the man and woman sitting in the row in front of them were having a good time on the train. In fact, the couple had an extremely good time for at least an hour. You'll need to fill in the blanks because I can't do it without blushing. I asked my mom and her friends why they didn't call on a conductor or employee to intervene. They said it was too much fun to watch and it made for an entertaining trip. It's a miracle I didn't have a wreck before I got out of downtown.

Looks like we could have brought the magazine after all.

I Am So Lucky

Music brings peace and comfort and joy. It inspires both wonderful and terrible things.

Best of all, music is timeless. Or at least the music of the sixties and seventies seems to be. That's the music I grew up with and love.

There has been a lot of news this week about the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. There were clips of many of the singers, including Joe Cocker. Yesterday, on "America's Got Talent," a contestant sang "You Are So Beautiful." It was fabulous and the audience loved it, definite goose bump time. That song performed by Joe Cocker was on the radio all the time in 1975.

What keeps the "pop" music from that twenty year period so fresh and interesting? Perhaps it is because our society had such a transition during those decades and the music reflected it, in both the tunes and the lyrics. Even when the lyrics were ambiguous, the words were at least understandable and you could wrap them around your own experiences. And you still can.

Except for a few Christian pop and country songs, I haven't a clue about more current music. I hear it every now and then blaring out car windows, sometimes blaring out my own window if my son is driving. I wonder if, thirty years from now, any of those songs or raps will still be on the radio.

I bet my seventies music will still be there, though, playing through the speakers of my comfortable SUV as I drive off into the sunset.

Life in the Fast Lane

Yesterday we headed up to central Oklahoma in our trusty Tahoe, five of us full size people and a dog. We celebrated my dad's birthday and then headed home today, timing our three and a half hour drive so that we would be back in time for my son's soccer scrimmage scheduled for late afternoon.

As we were virtually stopped on the highway in a construction zone single lane, we were hit by a car from behind. That's okay. We have one of those "national cars of Texas." The person who hit us left a string of car parts a block long. Our car lost a trailer hitch cover and will have to have the bumper replaced. But other than that we were fine. The dog, in her crate in the back, didn't even bark. After a ten minute delay to get the other driver's insurance information, we were on the road again and made it to the soccer game with time to spare.

We bought our first Suburban in 1997. Since then we've had a second Suburban and now have "traded down" to a Tahoe, which is a Suburban without the third row of seats. As far as I'm concerned, it's the safest, most comfortable car on the highway, and you'll have to pry my cold, dead hands from the steering wheel before I'll give it up.

But continuing our family string of bad luck, for the third time in three weeks my husband gets to call our insurance agent to get a claim number for a wrecked car.