Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Frozen solid

Central Arkansas is in a deep freeze today, with a couple of inches of solid ice -- packed sleet and frozen rain -- on all the roadways.

After Noel called to report that his flight to Little Rock had been canceled last night, I was somewhat relieved. Today, I though, would be a better day for driving the 40 miles from the airport to the house.

Was I ever wrong. Noel landed at 10 am, and was in the car by 10:15 am. At 3 pm, he pulled into the driveway. In between he spent over an hour stopped on I-40 while a huge accident that closed both directions of the freeway was cleared away, then more hours creeping along at five mph.

In our relief over his being home safe and sound, and in the absence of anything exciting to eat in the house and any desire on either of our parts to cook, we decided to venture out to our favorite Mexican place for dinner. I started reconsidering the wisdom of that decision about a quarter mile from the house, by the university on a gentle decline, when the car started sliding. Thank goodness for Subaru all-wheel-drive -- the wheels caught before we hit the curb. But just like the Wise Men, after dinner we returned home by another way.

School is canceled again for Archer tomorrow. The crucial admissions and retention decisions that my colleagues and I were supposed to make today will be made tomorrow, since they can't wait any longer, and I just hope that enough of us will be there to make them. For now, I'm thrilled to have the whole family together again and to be inside and warm.

3 comments:

Paul Eilers said...

We live close to UCA and our road is frozen SOLID with ice.

Even our blowup snowman tore due to the sleet. Whaaa!

The high tomorrow is 45, so hopefully that will clear some of this stuff up.

Kelly said...

In a snow and ice storm that hit one year, I think before you were here, it took me 9 hours to get from my work on Rodney Parham to UCA.

That's after I went through the median and went the old highway through Morgan.
If I had not had a new book in the car, I most likely would have been in the nut house.

Adam Villani said...

Hee hee... "like the wise men, we returned home by another way."

I've never driven on, or even seen, ice on a road. But the mountains surrounding the Valley have been covered in snow the past couple of days, which is quite beautiful.