Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson about carpooling in bad weather: don’t do it.
I had a meeting scheduled yesterday afternoon some 60 blocks from my office. It was snowing, yet the other attendee and I decided to ride together in my car. We got to the other office without a hitch and accomplished a moderate amount of work over about an hour of meeting time.
Then it was time to head back to our office. My car had more than an inch of snow built up on it and it was clear that other drivers were starting to have difficulties maneuvering through the increasingly snow-covered streets. Still, we had no choice but to head back so my associate could retrieve his car.
At first, I found some good side routes and managed to avoid a lot of traffic. The Honda Insight was impressive as it chugged up snowy hills with a minimum of sliding. Unfortunately, we eventually met up with many thousands of other motorists headed in our same general direction.
We were within about 15 blocks of the office when forward movement ground to a halt. Many of the cars around us would begin to fishtail and slide every time they attempted to inch forward. We tried to kill time by talking about work projects and listening to and mocking weather reports on the radio, but the whole adventure ceased to be any fun at all somewhere around the one-hour mark.
We finally made it back to our building a little less than two hours late for our next meeting. Sigh.
Today I’ll be heading out into the snow again, but at least it isn’t actively snowing anymore. One thing I do know: if I have to leave the office by car, I’m going alone!
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