;)
We are having the very worst kind of weather that we ever get around here - warm temperatures and rain, right in the middle of January. I hate it when this happens. I prefer 40 below over 40 above.
And the wind was fierce and growing stronger - in some places the gusts are forecast to reach 105.
But today, the bad weather was our friend. Back in September, on a bright, sunny, day, Margie drove down a stretch of the Old Glenn Highway that she seldom traverses only to have a cop pull up behind her, lights flashing.
As he walked toward her, she removed her seat belt so that she could get to her driver's license. When he saw that she did not have it on, he wanted to give her a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, but she defied him on this point, held her ground and he backed off. He did give her a ticket for exceeding the speed limit in a school zone. That ticket was going to cost us $350 and put six points on her record.
While it is natural for a husband to defend his wife, Margie is, in fact, most diligent and conscientious about slowing down to the 20 MPH limit whenever she comes to a school zone. And many has been the time when she thought I was approaching a school zone too fast that she has admonished me to slow down.
So she found it difficult to believe that she had done so on this day. When she went back to take a look, the yellow warning light hung in the midst of yellow leaves illuminated by the bright sun.
So she decided not so much to contest the officer's contention that she had not slowed down in the school zone, but to argue that, on this fall day, the light had been hard to see and to plea for some leniancy - a reduced fine, perhaps; not so many points put on her driving record.
Her court appearance was scheduled for 9:30 AM, so we planned to leave here about 8:00, or shortly thereafter.
The wind was blowing, rain was falling and on the roads water was flowing over ice. Many of the people who were out driving were sliding off the roads. A bit before 7:00, an announcment came over the radio that all the schools in the Mat-Su Valley and in Anchorage had been closed due to hazardous road conditions.
Furthermore, traffic was reported to be moving about 10 mph along much of the Glenn Highway.
So, hoping to get there on time, we set off just after 7:00 AM. All the way in to town, we passed through a gauntlet of disabled vehicles - the vast majority of them four-wheel drive pickup trucks - that had piled into the snow alongside the highway. Some of them had tipped over. Some of them had collided.
Even so, moving traffic was shockingly light. It almost seemed like a ghost highway.
Just before we reached Anchorage, a radio announcement told us that the Anchorage Court System had closed for the day.
Still, I dropped Margie off at the courthouse, then drove around a few blocks while she went inside. She found the judge just about ready to close her court, but because Margie had come all the way from the valley on the slick roads, she took Margie's case - and dismissed it. The officer who had issued the ticket was not there to testify against her. He was probably out tending to cars that had slid off the road.
No fine to pay; no points against her driving record.
I took the above picture afterward, while stopped at a red light, waiting to turn onto Tudor.