Spend any amount of time behind the wheel and you have and will again be inconvenienced by some form of road blockage or detour, whether caused by an accident, road construction, and sometimes a fire.
This was the case this morning, as I made good on an early departure to head up Hwy 50 to my current winter mistress – Heavenly Valley ski resort. While it would be dishonest to not admit that I caught the morning TV news report of Highway 50 being completely closed due to a structure fire. After a careful calculation as to my driving time and factoring the likely time it takes to extinguish a typical cabin fire I made the decision to a) head up the road and b) not make a feasible mid-course correction by selecting an alternate target, such as my ‘winter-ex’, Kirkwood.
And that is how I ended up sitting in a line of traffic longer than a string of buses trying to get to the next Barack Obama lovefest (well, maybe not quite THAT long).
While sitting there forlorn I was occasionally interrupted by a snowbomb of powder from yesterday’s dumpage succumbing to the affect of the warming morning sun and gravity and landing next to my truck in an explosion of fluffy powder – that I was supposed to be skiing in by now, damn it – that briefly floated skyward until dissipating and disappearing.
And while sitting there I got to thinking about how we – or at least I – often gauge the level of empathy for the victim’s plight that caused the delay in my well made plans as a function of that person’s culpability in exactly what caused the problem in the first place.
In the case of a car accident, was some poor soul run off the road by some dunderhead who was tailgating, passing on blind curves and cutting in too abruptly or was the driver of the questionable driving civility the one in the ditch – and probably someone not wearing a seat belt…while tuning the radio…and checking the GPS…and…well, we’re certainly not going to feel sorry for HIM!
Or in a home fire, was the cause a lousy heater installation by the last owner or did the current occupant get drunk and fall asleep while smoking. You get the idea.
Not only do we temper the extent of our sorrow for the person’s predicament based on the blame as we care to assign it, but it also has a direct affect as to the amount of our annoyance for not getting where we are going.
So while I sat there thinking, how dare someone cause me a delay for around an hour in hitting the slopes, I remembered that someone just lost a home, which is arguably the biggest bastion of our personal security and comfort, likely along with years of family pictures and possessions that remind us of where we have been and with whom.
My skis did make it on the mountain – albeit a little later than planned – and there it was, placed as a celestial clue to chill out – have a beer, and appreciate that my morning misfortune was miniscule.
All in all a very nice day, indeed.
Sand Dollar Adventures 
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