Lights

With the rotation of holidays in the custody agreement, this was pretty much my last chance to drive around with the girls looking at the Christmas lights before Christmas. I'll have them some Christmas Eve, but there's other plans afoot that night.



I knew it had started snowing, but it seemed like the plows had been out awhile and the roads ought to be okay. Which they were as long as you drove sensibly.



Of course, I realized when I got past that point of no return, your safety depends on everyone else driving sensibly as well, and on the last Saturday before Christmas, don't bet on that.



We had gotten on I-35 to head up to Olathe: there's a neighborhood there that famously overdoes the holiday lights. In Northbound lane, we saw the cops had arrived at the scene of a pileup. Four or five cars spun in various attitudes and angles, with crumpled hoods and whatnot. In the ditch, in the road turned the wrong way, etc.



But in order to turn around and go home, at this point, I still had to drive all the way to 151st on I-35, and the road back was staked up with cars waiting behind the accident. Ambulances were coming up the shoulder past the two columns of cars.



So, in for a penny, we went ahead and drove through Sleepy Hollow.

I took back roads coming home, thinking to avoid the mayhem of I-35. Forgetting, until I was again committed to a course of action, that the back way is both hilly and windy. I worried about someone crossing the center line into me, and then I caught a weird bit of snow (the way it berms at the edges from the plows) and was nudged toward the center line myself. No one coming the other way, and I was going slow enough I was able to correct before I actually left my lane, but it was enough to underscore what an idiot I can be.