Fred and Valerie

Boston.com has a great series of photographs following Barack Obama’s inauguration from beginning to end.

The drive home this evening was a bit rough thanks to very high winds. While the winds weren’t blowing hard in Charlottesville, the closer we got to Waynesboro and Fishersville, the more the car was getting pushed all over the road.

After working out, we passed the Fishersville Sheetz on the way home and the flags at the station were blowing straight out.

Because I was interested, I looked up what the wind speeds were about the time we were out on the roads and at 5:20 PM, the wind speed in Stuarts Draft was 14 MPH with gusts to 31 MPH. By comparison, Charlottesville’s winds at the same time were listed as “calm.”

…and neither does anybody else when it comes to what’s going to happen in our current economy.

Just yesterday, CNNMoney ran a story about the impending gloom of the week to come. In that story, they had the following quote:

“Everyone is bracing for the GDP number to be pretty terrible, but the bigger surprise could come with the housing numbers, which are also expected to be awful,” [Kenny Landgraf, principal and founder at Kenjol Capital Management,] said.

And then the housing numbers came out and showed a 6.5% INCREASE from November. Sure, prices were down from the previous year, but I think a 6.5% increase in sales was hardly expected and is a far cry from “awful.”

The point? You can’t believe everything when it comes to predictions. Our economy reaches far beyond our borders now and it’s anybody’s guess as to how long and how deep this current recession will continue. And just like there will be those who guess, there will be those who guess wrong. Do what’s best for you and yours and base it on actual data, not predictions pulled from thin air.

This morning, we walked out to the garage and, much to our surprise, there was snow on the ground. Not a lot of snow, but a lot more than we were expecting considering the weather forecast last night didn’t have a single mention of any precipitation. At all.

I checked the driveway and found that there was only about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of snow that had fallen, so I figured we would be okay. Wrong.

Getting out of the neighborhood was easy enough, as was getting to US-340 so that we could get to the Interstate. But, US-340 is when all the problems started. It was completely covered in ice. Completely. All the snow had been compacted into a surface that was more like a hockey rink than a road.

From the people who were driving like they didn’t have an engine in their car to the people who drove as if it was just a normal day (and promptly slid through the red light when their brakes failed to give them the response they expected), it was sheer madness.

At one point, we actually had someone tailgating us! We were stopped at a light and had to go up a slight incline to go through the light. The light turned green, I slowly started to move and the guy is RIGHT BEHIND ME. He wasn’t giving me any room and as I slowed down a bit for the car in front of me, my car lost traction and I had to gas the engine to spin the tires to melt the ice to get any traction whatsoever to keep from sliding back into this dolt.

Before we got to the Interstate, our friend called to say traffic was completely stopped. So, rather than park on the Interstate, we continued to Wal-Mart, where we spent the next hour doing random shopping. Eventually, we bought some holiday stuff at 75% off, got in the car, and headed to the Interstate.

Traffic was moving okay until we actually got to Afton Mountain. At that point, everyone seemed to feel it was necessary to slow down to 30 MPH, despite there being absolutely no ice on the road because it had all melted away. So we had cars driving in nothing worse than a light rain going 30 MPH. Normally, they’re flying by you if you do anything less than 70 MPH.

The worst part is that the traffic stayed that way, only getting up to the 50-60 MPH range for short bursts at a time, all the way until we got off the Interstate in Charlottesville and it hadn’t even snowed in Charlottesville. In fact, half the drive to Charlottesville was on roads that were COMPLETELY DRY! No melted ice. No salt. No anything. Nothing. And yet traffic seemed to just keep waiting for that patch of black ice that wasn’t there.

In the end, it took us 2 hours, 45 minutes to get to work, mostly because of absolutely horrible drivers. I love the snow, but sometimes I wish it would just blizzard so that nobody left their house and this could all be avoided. This in-between stuff just brings out the worst in drivers.

One of the fun things we did over the holidays was hike up Stone Mountain, located just outside of Atlanta, GA, with a friend of ours. Once we reached the top, I took photos to make a panoramic of the view to the city of Atlanta.

My best guess is that the view extends all the way from about Conyers, GA (on the left) to Duluth, GA (on the right. You can clearly see the skyscrapers of Atlanta just to the left of center and the large buildings of Buckhead to the right of center (along with Kennesaw Mountain).

The holidays are over and we managed to travel over 2,400 miles while spending over 53 hours in the car, but it was well worth it to see all our family and friends. Now it’s back to work and a lot less restaurant food.