One of the drawbacks to being a lawyer is that we’re required to bill a minimum number of hours for the year. Due to my taking the PA Bar exam earlier this year, I’m still working on making up some hours. So I’ve been going in on weekends. Karen dropped me off in the morning, when it wasn’t snowing too badly. She suggested that I drive myself in, so I could get home, but thought that wasn’t such a good idea. I turned out to be slightly prophetic.
I think a visual aid will be helpful. A map of my journey home:
View Steve’s route home, 19 Dec 2009 in a larger map
By the time I left the office, around 5:30 to catch the bus, there was well over a foot of snow. The roads were treacherous at best, and there weren’t all that many cars. Not that many buses either. But before I left, I checked Septa’s Web site to make sure the buses were running. (My alternate route would have been to take the subway and walk the mile and change home from the subway stop.)
I missed the first bus on Market Street by less than a minute; I saw it blasting through the intersection, but I was too far away to flag it down. So I waited about 3-5 minutes for the next bus. I was one of four people on the double bus. Managed to get to 4th & Market in plenty of time for the next anticipated #57 bus, which would bring me south towards home.
There was a couple waiting there when I got under the bus shelter. I asked how long they’d been waiting. Only about five minutes. Not too bad, since the previous bus was more than ten minutes earlier, and it was only about another five minutes to go.
Well, 15 minutes go by. No bus, and no bus in sight (as difficult as it was to look up the street into the blowing snow). I was getting too cold to keep waiting, and the taxis weren’t having all that much luck going anywhere – skidding out, etc. Taking a taxi, if I could find one, would have been a dicey proposition.
So I called Karen and told her that I was walking. She thought I was nuts and said I should grab a taxi or she would come and get me. I told her to stay home, that there was no way she should be going out. I was looking back for the bus, expecting to be able to jump on as I kept reaching the next stop down the route. No luck. I got to Washington Avenue, and stumbled into drifts that were above my knee.
It took about 25 minutes, but I made it home in one piece, rather wet and cold. And since there have been no plows on any of the streets in my neighborhood, and there will likely not be, it’s going to be a messy few days getting to work. Plus, the plow that was supposed to plow out the common driveway here (it’s not a city street, so it would never be plowed) never showed on Sunday. Or called to say when he’d being showing up. Fun. Time to find a new plow company. Somebody plowed a one plow width of the common driveway today, but didn’t lower the plow far enough, so there’s a nice layer of ice in the driveway.