Bucking for a Darwin Award

Mid-day yesterday Zahava called to tell me she'd just heard that there was a winter storm warning for our area (we live in one of the highest elevations in Israel).

I rushed through I report I was working on and bugged out shortly after lunch time to start heading home in a driving rain... all the time watching the temperature gauge on the instrument cluster of the Vespa drop like a countdown timer of a rocket launch.

When the temp gauge started blinking 3° Celsius the rain turned to sleet... and I was still only about half way home and traveling at a crawl.  At one point I came upon an overturned dump truck that had spilled its load of sand all over the road.  It was blocking both lanes and traffic was backed up in both directions.  Being on two wheels I was able to squeeze by on the shoulder.

After a bit the sleet started to pile up in the lanes, and as the temp hit 0° Celsius, the roadway started to freeze with uneven clumps of frozen sleet.

And then the snow started... blowing nearly horizontal by a strong, gusting wind coming from the side.

By now I was riding at walking pace with my heels dragging on both sides of the scooter to catch myself from falling over each time one or both of the wheels side slipped on a patch of ice or a mound of frozen slush/sleet.

It changed back to freezing rain a couple of kilometers from home and I was able to get the speed back up to about 20 Kph for the rest of the ride.

But once I was home and sipping a hot mug of tea to thaw out, I couldn't help thinking about the series of bad decisions I'd made.

First and foremost was not leaving the scooter at work and taking the bus home once I knew bad weather was imminent.  Oh sure, it would have added a few hours to my commute, but it would have been warmer (and safer).

Then there was the decision not to turn back (or pull into one of the towns along my route) once it really got yucky.

Maybe it's a guy thing, (like not pulling over for directions... even after passing the same landmark for the third time!), but there is something that probably has a fancy name and pathology in the DSM, which causes men to forge on... even after they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they've made a bad decision.

As if by beating the odds and surviving the ordeal there awaits some partial vindication for the original bad decision. [~shakes head~]

That my wife hasn't left me after all these years of such bad judgement calls is all the proof of her love I'll ever need.

[Afterthought:  I rode my scooter to work this morning in a driving rain.  Ouch!, that stove is hot!  Hmmmm... I wonder what'll happen if I touch it again?