I made it back. More than an hour later, I am still bumping up and down after traveling the Tulsa streets. If you haven’t been out, here is a recap:
The soft, fluffy snow is gone. In its place is something like linoleum or kitchen tile – hard as a bathtub and slippery as the soapy shower. Getting out of the neighborhood is a smooth slide until the intersection at the arterial street, where snow plows have constructed a foot high barrier reef. Expecting something better along Memorial? Think again.
It appears that some jokester buried enough bricks under the snow to simulate cobblestones, with pre-configured potholes. I have not driven such a rough road since I was searching for a downed airplane in the rugged Jack Fork mountains in southeastern Oklahoma. I broke the oil pan on the Monte Carlo in that adventure.
This morning, I traversed streets from Yale to Garnett, from 51st to 31st. That seven mile excursion took about an hour and fifteen minutes, round-trip. The car was being jacked around so badly I was afraid the suspension might just snap off, even at my slow pace. Naturally, I was tailgated by some Jeep-pickup-SUV-types who, no doubt, thought my speed was a ridiculous affront to their need for wheel-churning action, but lacked the appropriate anatomy to pass.
The ultimate irony was encountering several snow plows driving the arteries – with the blade UP! Here’s a suggestion: lower that thing and the results will increase dramatically. Sure, they’re enroute to their assigned plow-zone, but what would it hurt to scrape down some of the jagged ice-balls that cover every street in Tulsa?
A week’s business has been lost at the Bookstore, but that’s not my biggest worry. I keep thinking about the poor souls that intended to stop by before the blizzard, but stocked up on bread and milk instead, and are now on the warm side of the 2011 Blizzard, reduced to reading the back of the milk carton and the ingredients on the bread bag.