Snow Storm '06

The roads sucked.

I didn't have to suffer out there like most other folks because a) I didn't leave work in the afternoon and b) I didn't drive to work yesterday.

Some of the crazy-ass stuff I've heard since the Doom of the White Death:

One of our anchors was trapped in his vehicle for four and a half hours yesterday - and he lives about 25 minutes away.

Interstate 71 (which runs by my neck of the woods) was a blacktop parking lot for hours and hours and hours - with cars stalling, spinning out and running out of gas.

I even heard a rumor that one guy spent hours biding his time in his car while he traveled from Downtown Cincinnati to West Chester (about a 35 minute drive).

It was a kind of day I would have prayed for as a kid.

Perfect, packing, Snowman making snow. Wet, fluffy stuff that messed up the roads and closed hundreds of schools (I know because I stayed behind at work for several hours to take those calls). Perfect Snow Cream making snow... The kind of snow that fluttered and whipped through the air like a gauzy winter blanket getting fluffed out across the city.

I remember putting on my hot pink, White Stag winter coat and matching snow pants, trudging out to the backyard for hours and hours of sledding. My sister, Bridge, and I would walk out like little abominable snow girls, headed for a massive hill covered with knotty walnut trees and overgrown weeds. I'd carry along my red plastic sled and she'd tag along with a yellow disc, anxious to see who could go faster, farther, closer to the cliff at the edge of our neighbor's yard.

I was always the daredevil.

A smile plastered across my rosy-cheeked face and bits of snow trapped in the wrists of my coat, I'd fly down the steep hill, sometimes sitting straight up - other times head first, testing out new techniques to outdo my last trip town the slope.

My heart would beat as fast as a rattlesnake's tail every time I sailed down the hill.

I was afraid I'd get hurt. Afraid I'd fly off the cliff and into forest of trees between the edge and the creek at the bottom of the ravine. Terrified I'd lose control.

But nothing ever happened.

A few close calls, but I always made it. Everything always came out right in the end.

And I guess that's the way it is these days, sailing down the steep, scary slope of life.