Monday, February 19, 2018

Safely home - still exhausted


Miss D. and I finally made it home about half past midnight this morning.  We had a long flight, delayed by the arrival of a winter storm in Salt Lake City, which delayed our flight while it was de-iced before takeoff.  There was a bit of weather around Dallas, too, requiring incoming flights to "stack up" and delay their landings while controllers talked them down more slowly than usual.

The weather on the ground was strange.  Our car was parked in the long-term parking garage, but every car inside it was wet, as if it had rained indoors!  The floors were damp and slick, too.  There was a heavy mist, and it had obviously penetrated everything it could.  Driving home was no fun at all, with drifting banks of mist making it hard to see at times.  That didn't stop a lot of drivers going at it full tilt, to the undoubted irritation of the State Police, who were out in force.  I must have seen eight or nine of their vehicles on the road north, pulling over everyone who was driving too fast for the conditions.  I daresay they made a lot of money last night writing traffic citations.

I've got to give a shout-out to Braum's in Decatur, TX.  They were just closing as we arrived, but the manager could see we were tired and hungry, so he let us order a burger and fries apiece, and sit down and eat them, "as long as you don't mind us cleaning up around you!"  We didn't.  That was very good of him.  It gave me energy to drive the last stretch through the mist.  Progress was slow, as I didn't dare drive at the speed limit - vision wasn't good enough.  Still, we made it in the end, and fell into bed, very tired.

I'll post again later this morning when I'm compos mentis once more.

Peter

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll take almost any other weather conditions over driving in heavy fog. The most nerve-wracking was a fog that was only 8-10' thick, so the big rigs could see and were doing the limit, but the cars had to creep along.

LittleRed1

Old NFO said...

We were a tad worried... Glad you made it okay!

Chris Nelson said...

Fog on 380 and 287, that brings back road trip memories of going to visit relatives.

Once I took out most of a flock of guinea fowl in the fog. Stopped and offered to pay, but the farmer declined since it was his fault they had reached the highway.