Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

It occurs to me that a few aerial photographs of the city would give a very quick estimate of what percentage of homes in Baltimore are occupied. The vacant houses have perfectly smooth snow on their roofs (a small part of me wants to spell that "rooves"), and the occupied ones have a wavy/ripply texture to their snow.

(Then again, the info is probably already in a database somewhere compiled by more usual means. This'd still be a fun way to get an interesting visual representation of the situation though. If I had accesss to an aircraft. *shrug*)

Responding to a comment fiannaharpar made to my post about snow a couple of days ago, I managed to remind myself of a couple of snow driving stories.

Yeah, I'm going to brag. Deal.

Driving in snow can be hazardous, yes. Failing to adjust for conditions is bound to be expensive and can be deadly. That's one mistake the snow-idiots make (or adjusting but not adjusting enough, such as a habitual tailgater who finally backs off to what would've been a safe following distance on clean pavement but still isn't enough in the snow). The opposite mistake is nearly as bad (it can also be expensive, but it's more likely to be grossly inconvenient than fatal): adjusting inappropriately, being too timid, becoming an obstacle or even (inadvertently) creating traps for other drivers.

I don't mind others' being careful -- I encourage it -- even if they wind up being much more cautious than I am. They can compensate for real or imagined limitations of their vehicles, tires, or reflexes without my calling them idiots -- I may call them "in my way", but not idiots. But when somebody moving smoothly along slowly but fast enough to make it up a slippery hill, decides to come to a complete stop at the base of the hill and look at it for a while, thus removing any chance of making it to the top, well that I have a problem with. Likewise the folks who make it impossible for me to merge safely, the ones who park with most of the car sticking out into already too-narrow traffic lanes, those are the idiots as much as the ones flying to and fro without any real control of their vehicles because they don't understand that snow is slippery.

One of the messages I got from my father loud and clear even before I learned to drive myself was that (when driving), snow is to be neither ignored nor feared, but respected and adjusted for.