THE BLIZZARD OF 2009

WELL HERE IT IS SUNDAY AND ABOUT 48 HOURS AFTER THE SNOW FIRST STARTED FALLING IN THE "BLIZZARD OF 2009" The snow finally stopped sometime around one AM this morning, making this a 29-hour weather event. Now I have been in the DC area since October of 1973; and although I have seen a greater quantity of snow I have NEVER seen it snow for a whole day and night. Hells bells, this doesn't even happen in my native Ohio very often.

I did not even bother trying to dig out until about 5:30 PM and it took me over an hour to free the cab and get going. Even now however the plow crews are just starting to get caught up. Major through roads are mainly clear but secondary streets are touch-and-go and the conditions of secondary streets depend mainly on how badly the residents wanted to get out. Some of then have been shoveled by the residents, but the plows have not gotten to most of them.

The idiots who live here in Northern Virginia however do not listen to the police when they ask anyone who does not absolutely have to be out in this to stay put. The roads are an absolute obstacle course of stuck vehicles and accidents. And lets not even mention, the pedestrians; who walk in the middle of the road and force drivers to slam on the brakes resulting in everything from spinouts to collisions. And, here in recession-proof Richie Richville we have dolts who strap on their cross-country skis and treat the snow-clogged streets as their personal schuss.

I don't know what the official total snowfall is, but around here the shit is knee-deep which in my case is about 22 inches.

There is a huge demand for cabs right now and you might think I would make a lot of money from going out and driving, and you might wonder why a cabbie is blogging with everybody and his uncle deluging the company with calls. Obviously you have never done what I do for a living. People call cabs because they cannot get their cars out of their streets; so they call us and if a driver is stupid enough to actually take a call, often as not he winds up just as stuck as the people who called; who half the time have decided they don't want to go after all. It is pretty hard to be polite to such hammerheads, especially when you wish you could use a tire iron to bludgeon some sense into them; so for my part I just cruise for street pickups.

My hat is off to the little shops and restaurants whose brave employees have opened up through this freakish event. At least I have not lacked for food, drink, etc; and some of them have asked why, since they were able to get to work, that I am not working. Like most people in this liberal-infested dump they don't bother thinking. All they had to do was drive TO work. For me, driving IS work.

However, tomorrow is Monday and despite government closures there is still going to be a ton of business, and not just hammerheads wanting to go out and get drunk. I hope to hell the plows get more work done by 4:30 AM; because snow or no, tomorrow I gotta go out and make it happen. Getting sots to a bar is not essential work. Getting people to work is. Wish me luck.