A BLIZZARD, A SIX-PACK AND A PIZZA

 IT CONTINUES TO SNOW TUESDAY MORNING...

...WITH 8"+ ALREADY FALLEN

US HWY. 2 LEADING UP TO THE BRIDGE OVER THE DULUTH HARBOR...

...ON THE BRIDGE OVER THE DULUTH HARBOR

Tuesday, 8:30 AM.  Veterans Day, fly your flag!  24 degrees F, wind NW, blustery and driving the snow, which is still falling from leaden skies 8+" already on the ground.  There is considerable fog over the channel and the Islands. The humidity is 93%, the snow crystalline and sticky.  The barometer is moving up slightly, currently at 30.10".  The whole mess is coming off the lake now, as the low passes through,  and a Nor'easter usually lasts three days.
   Buddy and I took an abbreviated walk this morning, only venturing around the block in the snow,  and  I having to stop several times on the unplowed 11th street hill.  It got my blood moving, though.
   Yesterday's trip to Duluth was a nail-biter on the way there, and a white-knuckler on the way back, easily one of the worst winter storm experiences in my sixty-two years of driving.
   It was bad enough when we left the house at 10:00 AM, and we knew how really bad it was going to be when we got fifteen miles down the road, just past Washburn on Hwy. 13, when we passed a  gruesome recent accident, the ambulances still arriving.  A head-oner between a pickup and an SUV, the top of which was sheared off, the first and only time either Joan or I had seen that happen to a vehicle.
   Hwy. 2 from Ashland to Superior was icy with high winds and blowing snow, with very poor visibility leading into Superior and Duluth.  On the way back from Joan's eye doctor appointment the roads were even worse, the temperature in the mid-twenties and the blizzard driving straight at us out of the east.  The conditions worsened to an almost complete white-out of fog and blowing snow, becoming almost impossible to see as it became dark.  On top of that the windshield kept icing up, making things even worse.  Thirty-five or forty miles per hour was absolutely top speed all the ninety miles back to Bayfield, making the trip all of three hours long.  Once out of Superior, there was no place to spend the night, so we had to forge on.  I will have to say that the Honda Ridgeline is the best winter driving vehicle I have ever owned, handling ice, snow and high wind conditions with aplomb.  But it couldn't do much about the poor visibility.
   When we finally got to Washburn I was tempted to stop for a double of something, but that would have left twelve miles of hills and curves to go, so I forgot about that tempting prospect.  There being not one watering hole open in Bayfield, and the brandy bottle empty at home, I had to settle for a beer.  It took a couple of hours for my fingers to straighten out.
   This blizzard reminds me of back in the day when a couple of buddies and myself would put chains on one of our pickups, load the bed with concrete blocks, and go out at night in a blizzard looking for cars stuck in a ditch or plowed in, the exasperated drivers desperate for help out of their plight.  We'd hook a chain from truck to car and with a little luck and some pushing by two young guys we would make five bucks a rescue.  Two rescues and we had enough for a six-pack and a pizza.
   I sure hope this blizzard, which is still raging, is the worst we will see this coming winter, and not just a harbinger of even worse to come.