Happy Belated Groundhog Day!

One hog saw his shadow, another didn't. So that means we have a fifty-fifty shot at an extended winter, or global warming.

One of the things I love about driving in the mountains is that there are no stop lights, there are rarely cars and it is like being on a roller coaster everywhere you go. There is traffic though at high points during the day. Mostly the traffic is due to schools and if you can avoid the different schools, you're in good shape. Like most mountain areas, there is always a back road. It might be a little rougher than the one that drives past the school, but at least there is no school traffic. Everything up here is two lanes too so there is limited ability to get around slow folk who have three kids going to two different schools. Two lanes, like one going one way the other lane goes the opposite way and when a transfer truck full of chickens passes you and you're in a Saturn, you get blown off the road because he is running fifty miles an hour and doesn't care about the schools or the super slow Mama that is driving in front of you.

The roller coaster effect adds life to travel. You go up, you come down, twist hard right, back left and up, and up, zoop left and ease down into a town square that comes out of nowhere. There is a road in White County that at the base of it is a sign that says, "BEWARE: More accidents occur on this road than any other in the state. Please drive carefully." The reason why is its rollercoasterness. Even if you go forty, it feels like you are flying. Wee-bumps are nothing compared to this nightmarish twisty-turning, leaping up and down, crazy-ass road. I love this road. It is a thriller.

One of the excitements of the road is that you cannot see anything beyond the turn in front of you. So there could be a car, a dog, a deer, a poorsam, any number of exciting things to dodge and swerve. I can remember in driver's ed when they talked about limited sights. This meant that on a hill there was no way to know what was on the other side so limited sights meant SLOW DOWN, as my intstructor fussed. In the mountains there is no such thing as unlimited sights. Unlimited means you are going down and can see a driveway at the bottom of the ravine before heading back up. This is the ideal place to have a driveway because there is a good chance you can get out of it without getting hit. However, since there is no real planning or structure for housing or businesses here, driveways are everywhere for any reason.There can be a car entering the two lane highway or there can be a tractor pulling a bale of hay or yes, a chicken truck(lots of chicken trucks, Georgia Snow). This combined with the limited sighting and the rollercoaster roads makes the ride to work adventurous if I am coming from anywhere not in the central business district of my county. It is really easy to do: not be in the business district. The business district is where both the LOWES stop light is and the WALMART stoplight is. When giving directions, these are important markers (they are the only markers other than the Dairy Queens, which everyone knows where they are). I have yet to figure out how I have not been killed driving around up here. Although, I am pretty good at deer hunting with my car and getting better at evasive driving (last wreck was someone who couldn't see me pulling out and me going around the edge of their front bumper instead of their driver side door). I have had more wrecks than anyone in my family. I have had three in Atlanta when I lived there and five up here. One of my wrecks was with a tree stump, two with deer, one with the front bumper of a Chevy Truck and my last one was in one of the lazy little town squares where a woman slammed into the back of me and although there was no damage done to either car she said something about being pregnant and not being able to pay attention because of it (whatever) so I filed a report with the police documenting that it was her fault. No way I am getting blame for lack of babies right at the heart of Babyland General. No way.

Now that you have a grasp of the dangers of driving in the mountains, think about this nicely added God feature this morning:

Fog