Tuesday's Great White Death (Part Two)
When we last saw our heroine, Melody, she had just beaten 60-odd agitated passengers to a seat on the last flight out of Charlotte, NC that was traveling north of the Mason Dixie line. I was still scanning the internet at home for any change in flight status, as I had a gut feeling I might be looking for a hotel room in the Charlotte area for Melody to occupy overnight.
The storm continued on it's trek across Cincinnati, with significant ice and snow piling up outside my home office window. I knew it would be a difficult journey as I by no means lay any claim to being skilled at driving on snow/ice covered roads. My greatest hope was that everyone else had enough sense to stay off of them. As the appointed time came closer I waited for Melody to call and let me know she was boarding the plane, so at that point I could bundle up and head south to CVG. So I sat and waited....
5:10 pm The call came. Melody has boarded the last flight leaving Charlotte for the land of German sausage and weak beer. Plus as confirmation I could here the monotone announcements of the ever-excited flight attendant telling the lucky few to tune off all electronic devices at this time. Thus ended the 30 second notification call lest Ms. Monotone comes rushing down the aisle and throws Melody off the 50 seat cigar tube US Air planned on relocating to Cincinnati in the next 1 1/2 hours....
And now began my drive/slide to the airport. I checked the local traffic system online to find the best route. The main artery, I-75, to the airport in Kentucky had this minor problem of live electrical wires laying across it near the St. Bernard exit, so the Hamilton County Sheriff's department was quite adamant that no occupied vehicles make contact with these "live wires" less the occupied vehicles become unoccupied vehicles without the occupants actually leaving the vehicle. Or something like that.....
My only other alternative was to take the I-275 "ring-road" to the west of town and cross into Indiana, then back into Kentucky to get to the airport. The probably of more ice and snow on the road was higher, but as the other direction was closed to all traffic till further notice, I really did not have much choice. On top of that, there was an accident to the west of my exit, so I would have to take the back roads over to the next exit ramp at Colerain Ave to start my trek.
I put on the foul weather gear, step into the garage and pushed the opener. Looking out onto my driveway I felt like I was staring at my icebox, except now we have the non-frosting kind of freezer, so I guess it was like looking at an icebox I had about 10 years ago. Not good.....
I get out of the drive and up my street to the stop sign. Looking both ways, I see that the roads are pretty devoid of cars. Plenty of ice, but few cars.... I turned right on the main road and then took a side street down to get to the Colerain Ave exit. This is the part where JoeBob in his Black Dodge Dakota pickup comes racing down the ice rink/road to lodge on my back bumper like a deer after a well stocked tomato garden. Now my blood pressure is through the roof as I am crawling at twenty miles an hour on a sheet of ice with blue collar comedy tour guy yapping on his cellphone about how badly I am driving as he rides my tail with one hand on the wheel in conditions better suited to slapshots then leisurely drives through the countryside.
After about 15 minutes of crawling along local roads I managed to ditched my escort and get on to I-275. It was less icy on the freeway but the combination of ice and snow mixed with accumulated slush did not endear me with high hopes this was going to be an easy ride. That and the fact there was an impressive collection of cars, minivans, & SUV's collected in the median of the highway helped to reinforce this theory....
Needless to say, after about 30 minutes of white knuckle sliding, I crossed into Indiana and noticed that the ice had lessened the further south I got. Good news for Melody because there was a snowballs chance in hell that her plane would land if she was attempting to come into any airport ten miles north of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport.
6:30 pm: I arrive at the airport. The roads are still passable in northern Kentucky but as the sun is setting the temperature is dipping, and the conditions were getting worse. The local radio station that I am tuned into keeps repeating the same thing: "if you don't need to be out on the roads this evening then just stay home. " I wonder to myself if they have to write this down for the announcer in large block letters or if his educational background has allowed him to develop a good enough set of logicial thinking skills that he could generate this dribble on his own.
I am early as Melody's flight does not arrive for another half an hour, so I head for my work office and load up a bag of items to work on in case this storm lasts a few more days, or in the worst case, we slide off the road and no one sees us for hours/days I can burn the paperwork to keep warm.... Hey.... stranger things have happened.....
7:03... US Air 2244 comes into view as it taxis up toward gate #7 at Terminal 2. The terminal is fairly empty as US Air shares it with United and American, and since most of their flight originate from an almost shut down Chicago there are very few brave souls tempting fate in hopes of a ticket out of Porkopolis tonight. I wait at the gate as Melody comes into the main terminal and gives me a big hug. It has been a long day for her. We proceed to baggage claim while chatting about the impending slide home.
7:18 We now have Melody's bag safely in the car and I explain that even though the roads look clear here in Kentucky they are in fact quite icy and will become more so as we go further north. Melody will never claim to be the calmest rider on the planet, but if we had a blood pressure gauge available at this point I think I would have won that contest. As we are leaving the parking lot there is an airport maintenance vehicle blocking half the exit road with it's emergency lights flashing. Behind it is a fallen portion of a tree that an airport employee is trying to cut up with a chainsaw, as the tree's branches could not handle all the ice that had accumulated on the branches and had broken off only to fall into the road. We notice that all the trees in the area are ice coated and I make sure I stay in the lane furtherest from any of the pretty but dangerous dangling branches.
7:23 The "stay off the roads" well educated guy on the radio informs us that the power lines are cleared and I-75 is now open. We decide to take I-275 east to I-75 and go straight through Cincinnati as the roads might be a little more clear then they were in Indiana.
7:28 We come off the ramp from I-275 East to I-75/71 North. Traffic is fairly light for this time of night but there are enough cars on the road to make me nervous about another potential JoeBob encounter.
7:40 As we slide over the suspension bridge into Cincinnati I notice there is no traffic to speak of coming down the "cut in the hill". I comment to Melody that this is strange... good for us... but strange as there are plenty of cars ahead of us. In about 10 more minutes the Harvard radio dude informs us that there has been a serious accident involving a tractor-trailer rig at the I-275 at I75/71 junction in northern Kentucky and that all lanes are blocked. That would explain it.
8:25 After much sliding and avoiding other cars we make it home safely. I am exhausted.
The next day I am watching CNN and they mention an accident in Kentucky caught on a police car dash-cam. If you look at the picture on the left you will see that the time on the video was 19:30:55, or 7:30pm. I saw this on the news all day on Wednesday before it registered that it was the intersection we had past through only a minute or two before hand on the way back from the airport.
Now I know why there was no traffic behind me.....
The storm continued on it's trek across Cincinnati, with significant ice and snow piling up outside my home office window. I knew it would be a difficult journey as I by no means lay any claim to being skilled at driving on snow/ice covered roads. My greatest hope was that everyone else had enough sense to stay off of them. As the appointed time came closer I waited for Melody to call and let me know she was boarding the plane, so at that point I could bundle up and head south to CVG. So I sat and waited....
5:10 pm The call came. Melody has boarded the last flight leaving Charlotte for the land of German sausage and weak beer. Plus as confirmation I could here the monotone announcements of the ever-excited flight attendant telling the lucky few to tune off all electronic devices at this time. Thus ended the 30 second notification call lest Ms. Monotone comes rushing down the aisle and throws Melody off the 50 seat cigar tube US Air planned on relocating to Cincinnati in the next 1 1/2 hours....
And now began my drive/slide to the airport. I checked the local traffic system online to find the best route. The main artery, I-75, to the airport in Kentucky had this minor problem of live electrical wires laying across it near the St. Bernard exit, so the Hamilton County Sheriff's department was quite adamant that no occupied vehicles make contact with these "live wires" less the occupied vehicles become unoccupied vehicles without the occupants actually leaving the vehicle. Or something like that.....
My only other alternative was to take the I-275 "ring-road" to the west of town and cross into Indiana, then back into Kentucky to get to the airport. The probably of more ice and snow on the road was higher, but as the other direction was closed to all traffic till further notice, I really did not have much choice. On top of that, there was an accident to the west of my exit, so I would have to take the back roads over to the next exit ramp at Colerain Ave to start my trek.
I put on the foul weather gear, step into the garage and pushed the opener. Looking out onto my driveway I felt like I was staring at my icebox, except now we have the non-frosting kind of freezer, so I guess it was like looking at an icebox I had about 10 years ago. Not good.....
I get out of the drive and up my street to the stop sign. Looking both ways, I see that the roads are pretty devoid of cars. Plenty of ice, but few cars.... I turned right on the main road and then took a side street down to get to the Colerain Ave exit. This is the part where JoeBob in his Black Dodge Dakota pickup comes racing down the ice rink/road to lodge on my back bumper like a deer after a well stocked tomato garden. Now my blood pressure is through the roof as I am crawling at twenty miles an hour on a sheet of ice with blue collar comedy tour guy yapping on his cellphone about how badly I am driving as he rides my tail with one hand on the wheel in conditions better suited to slapshots then leisurely drives through the countryside.
After about 15 minutes of crawling along local roads I managed to ditched my escort and get on to I-275. It was less icy on the freeway but the combination of ice and snow mixed with accumulated slush did not endear me with high hopes this was going to be an easy ride. That and the fact there was an impressive collection of cars, minivans, & SUV's collected in the median of the highway helped to reinforce this theory....
Needless to say, after about 30 minutes of white knuckle sliding, I crossed into Indiana and noticed that the ice had lessened the further south I got. Good news for Melody because there was a snowballs chance in hell that her plane would land if she was attempting to come into any airport ten miles north of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport.
6:30 pm: I arrive at the airport. The roads are still passable in northern Kentucky but as the sun is setting the temperature is dipping, and the conditions were getting worse. The local radio station that I am tuned into keeps repeating the same thing: "if you don't need to be out on the roads this evening then just stay home. " I wonder to myself if they have to write this down for the announcer in large block letters or if his educational background has allowed him to develop a good enough set of logicial thinking skills that he could generate this dribble on his own.
I am early as Melody's flight does not arrive for another half an hour, so I head for my work office and load up a bag of items to work on in case this storm lasts a few more days, or in the worst case, we slide off the road and no one sees us for hours/days I can burn the paperwork to keep warm.... Hey.... stranger things have happened.....
7:03... US Air 2244 comes into view as it taxis up toward gate #7 at Terminal 2. The terminal is fairly empty as US Air shares it with United and American, and since most of their flight originate from an almost shut down Chicago there are very few brave souls tempting fate in hopes of a ticket out of Porkopolis tonight. I wait at the gate as Melody comes into the main terminal and gives me a big hug. It has been a long day for her. We proceed to baggage claim while chatting about the impending slide home.
7:18 We now have Melody's bag safely in the car and I explain that even though the roads look clear here in Kentucky they are in fact quite icy and will become more so as we go further north. Melody will never claim to be the calmest rider on the planet, but if we had a blood pressure gauge available at this point I think I would have won that contest. As we are leaving the parking lot there is an airport maintenance vehicle blocking half the exit road with it's emergency lights flashing. Behind it is a fallen portion of a tree that an airport employee is trying to cut up with a chainsaw, as the tree's branches could not handle all the ice that had accumulated on the branches and had broken off only to fall into the road. We notice that all the trees in the area are ice coated and I make sure I stay in the lane furtherest from any of the pretty but dangerous dangling branches.
7:23 The "stay off the roads" well educated guy on the radio informs us that the power lines are cleared and I-75 is now open. We decide to take I-275 east to I-75 and go straight through Cincinnati as the roads might be a little more clear then they were in Indiana.
7:28 We come off the ramp from I-275 East to I-75/71 North. Traffic is fairly light for this time of night but there are enough cars on the road to make me nervous about another potential JoeBob encounter.
7:40 As we slide over the suspension bridge into Cincinnati I notice there is no traffic to speak of coming down the "cut in the hill". I comment to Melody that this is strange... good for us... but strange as there are plenty of cars ahead of us. In about 10 more minutes the Harvard radio dude informs us that there has been a serious accident involving a tractor-trailer rig at the I-275 at I75/71 junction in northern Kentucky and that all lanes are blocked. That would explain it.
8:25 After much sliding and avoiding other cars we make it home safely. I am exhausted.
The next day I am watching CNN and they mention an accident in Kentucky caught on a police car dash-cam. If you look at the picture on the left you will see that the time on the video was 19:30:55, or 7:30pm. I saw this on the news all day on Wednesday before it registered that it was the intersection we had past through only a minute or two before hand on the way back from the airport.
Now I know why there was no traffic behind me.....
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