Starting 2012

 

I hope everyone had a most excellent start to the New Year. Judging from my brief visits on Twitter and Facebook over the last 72 hours or so, it appears that many of you have in fact done exactly that.

And what about the Island Family, you ask?

Well.

We did have a wonderful time in the Midwest, spending a few days, including New Year’s Eve, with family.

But, come New Year’s Day, I was wishing that we were in Carolina. Because in Carolina, many of my friends were bravely facing the elements to dive into the Atlantic for their version of a Polar Plunge.

Reportedly, the water temperatures were in the mid 60s.

Good thing many of the participants always bring wet suits.

I’ll pause and allow all of you north of the Mason-Dixon Line to digest that one for a minute.

(Big long moment of silence here.)

(And now laughter.)

But, given the closest large body of water to me on New Year’s Day was Lake Michigan, where even July water temperatures are often lower than the Atlantic’s temperatures at that point, there was no way I’d be doing any sort of a Polar Plunge there.

Instead, we found ourselves racing to leave and beat the storm sweeping the Midwest. We stayed up late New Year’s Eve, of course, so we left late, the snow already beginning to barrel down on us as we drove.

It was touch-and-go all through Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. The skies would be clear and the roads would be dry one minute, and the next minute snow would be pelting the windshield, the roads suddenly wet, and strong wind gusts would move all the vehicles on the road in the direction it willed.

My favorite part was Ohio, where, after a brief pit stop and in the space of a few seconds, the weather went from innocuous-looking to blizzard-like.

I was driving.

And LCB? There he sat talking on the phone to his sister, pausing every once in a while to give brief commentary on the conditions that I was driving in to his sister. This commentary, of course, continued on after the phone conversation ended, despite the fact that I was at this point aphonic and white-knuckled, eyes locked on the road ahead.

For the life of me, I’ve been with that man for almost 20 years, and I still can’t figure out if his verbosity during tense moments is more comforting or annoying.

I’m fairly well-versed in snow from all my years of living in the Midwest, and have driven any number of times around Lake Michigan, battling the infamous lake-effect snow, so I knew it could have been worse. But, it’s been a while, you know? And, throughout it all, we watched as the temperatures hovered just above freezing for hours, and then dropped below freezing as we approached the mountains.

In the end, I got us into West Virginia, and then LCB took us through the mountains. The snow was falling there as well, but we knew the snow was probably light compared to how it was predicted to get if we waited until morning to cross, and the temperatures were only predicted to continue to drop, which of course would mean more ice. So we continued, and by the time we hit the North Carolina border, with the worst of it behind us, we decided to keep driving for home.

Thus the predawn light was just beginning to show itself as we crossed over the bridge, back onto the island. It’s been a while since I’ve driven through the night, and I did get a small thrill out of crossing the bridge at that hour, watching the beginnings of a world waking up.

But, really, I never want to do that again. Ever.

Which, in fact, is probably a sure sign that next year I will.