Yesterday, I put my life self on the line carelessly while out in the snow. I shoveled myself out from the front door to the sidewalk and down around my car at around noon time. We probably saw our street get plowed once or twice at most, but fortunately one of my neighbors owns a medium-sized backhoe that he used to clear all of the driveways up and down the street. In addition, the power got cut off during the night and didn’t come back on until sometime around 4pm this afternoon. This is obviously not a good thing considering that everything in my house runs on pure electric – meaning no solar, nat gas, heating oil, etc. So, I had to leave my poor father in the house while I trekked the snowy road to look for some extra salt at Lowes, and maybe some quick food since cooking was not an option.
Those of you who live in the mid-atlantic, or at least in south/central Jersey know how dependable Wawa is. If the apocalypse came tomorrow, you know Wawa would be open even on doomsday. Luckily, the only Wawa on the mainland that was open happened to be near my house. So I took that chance to grab some French Vanilla coffee before continuing on my journey.
Unsurprisingly, the nearby Lowes was about the only thing open, but somehow I talked myself into not going for fear of getting stuck in my parking spot, considering how fast the snow was falling down. I continued to Cape May Court House, and was disappointed to see that not even McDonalds was not open. In fact, nothing was open – no diners or fast food, no stores of any kind, no gas stations, and most of the parking lot at the hospital had been sealed off. Some of the traffic signals were down, and those that were up no one bothered to stop at the red unless they happen to see another car coming, which was also a rare sight. The best thing to do was to follow the car or truck in front of you for safety. When driving in a blizzard with near zero visibility and little sight of the road around you, it helps to use the other driver as your guide to getting around.
I somehow made it into North Wildwood and went down to my Grandmother’s house to check on her place. Her house is right across the street from the police station and next to a firehouse, so you would think the surrounding street would be cleared out. Well, as I drove past her house and around the corner to bypass an essential dead end, my car gets caught in some snow. About ten minutes later, two other police vehicles find me stranded, only to get stranded themselves. So over the course of 40 minutes we had to all wait for a backhoe to come in, dig a path for us to get out, and then push us all out one by one. Needless to say I could not have been more happy to have arrived home when I did, especially to discover the power had come back on.
I really wanted the chance to do some photography of a snow-covered beach, given where I live. I settled instead for a nice walk around my development, documenting the effects of the storm. Here’s one picture I took that demonstrates the power of a blizzard.
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