I get the frightful....not so much the delightful

I didn't take this picture.

As my husband often complains, I never have my camera when I see stuff. But I took a couple of snaps like this on my cell phone.

Yesterday.

I had an appointment in Hallstead, PA, then another in Port Jervis, NY. For those of you playing along at home without an offhand knowledge of Pennsylvania geography, it's the right hand half of the rectangle kinda near the top, then aaaallll the way off the edge back into NY where the Delaware is merely a creek. I travelled down Route 81 and noted with amusement that it was getting progressively worse. Cue the wadded up station wagon against the guardrail.

Then I hit 84. Route 84 goes through the Pocono Mountains. Usually its a lovely, pleasant drive through towns with names like 'Promised Land' and the ever-giggle inducing 'Dingman's Ferry'.

Yesterday it was like crossing Caradhras with an elf and a bunch of cranky hobbits.

I made 45 miles in just over 2 1/2 hours, with the van in low gear, creeping along flanked by trucks who were going as slow as I was. Truckers are the flight attendants of bad weather driving for me. If I'm on a plane and there is turbulence but the attendants don't look concerned, I don't worry. If its snowing like a bastard and truck drivers are still hauling ass, I don't worry. When my Schneider guys and my North American guys and my big dumptrucks are going 20, I want to panic a little.

Almost to Matamoras (I love the name of that town, though the name is the most interesting thing about it; it needs a snazzy Mexican restaurant. SOMETHING. Though the welcome center bathroom is obsessively clean.) the road clears up a little and I am cheered. Perhaps its passing. I do my thing in Port J and get back on 84, ready to patiently brave the creeping traffic back toward the Scranton area. The electronic billboard is flashing CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION/ROAD CLOSED MM37 /USE ALTERNATE ROUTE.

I think to myself, where is Route 37? Never heard of it. Oh well. I don't have to drive on it.

(sound of penny dropping)

Oh. MILE MARKER 37. Crap.

I get off the highway, and plan my escape route. Because my THIRD appointment, the one I was most assuredly going to be late to, was in Carbondale, and I was hearing that they were having some sort of apocalyptic ice age and thank ya no, I wasn't going to risk my neck getting there. So I followed my second customer's advice and jumped on 209 north because "It'll put you right on 17, and you can run right on in to Binghamton!".

She left out the part about it being 98 MILES from Binghamton. And the fact that I'd have to drive through the Catskills. But it turned out to be not so awfully bad, I just continued my stress management technique of driving in low gear singing songs from the 70s at the top of my lungs and eating string cheese for the extra 98 miles and got back to familiar territory. Total workday: 6:30am-8:15pm.

Yeah, I slept in today.