Lake Wobegon state of mind

Whatcom County has always reminded me of Lake Wobegon - a place of strong women, good-looking men, and above-average children.

I'm not a regular NPR listener (honest!), but I used to tune in to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Keillor did a monologue or homily on each show.  One that has stuck in my mind was about driving home to Lake Wobegon for the holidays.  Just as he's leaving the city it begins to snow, but being a Minnesotan Keillor presses on.  He describes the traffic and the snow becoming too thick for his wind-shield wipers.  He rolls down the window and uses an ice-scraper to clear a patch until the snow gets too heavy even for that.  He drives on for a while with his head stuck out the window and snow blowing in his face, and finally he opens the car door and leans out, driving in the tire tracks on the road.  He goes on this way for a while until at last he realizes that he's driving in the path of his own left front tire.

This is a useful parable for the many people who are going through involuntary lifestyle changes now, and probably a good metaphor for how things went in the ditch:  too many bankers, developers, builders and home-buyers all driving blind in their own tire-tracks.

I'm thinking of this because the snow is here.  It started Sunday when there is no bus service to Ferndale, so I biked to work in several inches of fresh snow.  Although there was a bit of blue sky in Ferndale, as I got closer to Bellingham it was cloudier and snowing pretty fast.  By the time I rode home, around 7:30pm, it was clear and cold and there was a glaze of ice on the roads.  It's been a while since I've ridden in temperatures low enough to make the bones in my hands and feet hurt, but the ride only took about an hour.  Overnight it we got several inches more and it's expected to continue through Wednesday.

It's interesting to see the tire tracks of sliding cars.  They loop right on to the road shoulder, go sideways, then pull up straight going the wrong way in the opposite lane.  At one intersection a car making a right turn had slid through the crossing, over the curb and on to the sidewalk, then crossed the road back in to the right lane.  I saw a huge 4x4 truck drive around a curve with its right wheels on the sidewalk and its left wheels in the bike lane.  Drivers seem to hug the right-hand side of the road in snow, I suppose worrying about head-on collisions with other cars, but they don't leave much space for bicycles.

There was one comfort on my commute yesterday.  I rode Pacific Highway, parallel to I-5, because it has less traffic and a lower speed limit than Northwest Drive.  Someone else had ridden ahead of me earlier in the day, so I had a wide knobby tire-track to follow all the way, going both ways.  I've seen several other bike commuters on Northwest.  Maybe on my days off I'll go for a recreational ride and look for the tracks of companions.