Challenging driving conditions

When I woke up this morning and looked out of the window everything was covered in snow. Beautiful, calm, silent snow with promises of joyful play for the kids.

I grew up a bit further north from where I live now, and every winter we knew there would be snow; a lot of it. I learned to drive a car with icy and winter-like driving conditions 4 months of the year.

Here… we are lucky if we get a few centimeters a couple of days each year. We had snow about a week ago, but the freezing wind turned it into hard crust and it was very icy… apart from the roads, which were dry and comfortable to drive on.

I like the snow, and I enjoy driving. But here they tend to salt the roads as soon as they expect we will get some sort of winter-like weather.

The result is a strange, dry slush which sticks to the car, especially under the mud flaps, causing the car to react a tiny bit slower. Or they plow the roads before salting them, and we get a wet salty road splashing up on both the car body and passers-by.

This morning I knew it would be a lot of obstructions on the road on my way to work (previous experiences told me that much), so I started early. I left my house thinking I was so early I would get ahead of the rush hours. Normally it takes me 13 minutes to drive to work. This morning it took me 2 hours!

The road was not slippery; there was snow, but no ice: It was perfect winter driving conditions and yet the traffic stood still.

I am a rather laid back person, it takes a bit to get me angry, but this morning my temperament really was boiling. If you don’t know how to master the driving condition you really should not drive. Get on a bus!

If you chose not to change tyres or you drive on worn out tyres: winter driving conditions is really not for you and/or your car, the rest of us will be late for work you see, and even more to consider: you really, really upset us who are comfortable driving and cause dangerous situations like hazardous overtakings and that does not help one bit when you are stuck in a queue of cars snowing down.

Do I seem a bit annoyed, perhaps even angry? I am! And now that I am writing this I feel bad about it.

I know we are different and have different skills. I know people have their routines of how to get to work or school. I know it is hard to wake up and change plans. Still, when you are good at something it is hard to settle with the fact that others are not, and I should learn how to be more indulgent.
That is my challenge this morning.