Snow

A Chesapeake Bay Son-Daughter Collaborative Masterpiece

Thursday morning we received a dusting of snow, but Friday afternoon we got what I would consider our first major snowfall of the season.

Unfortunately, it didn't last.

However, it lingered long enough for Son and Daughter to fasten a sled to the Gator and go zigzagging at high speeds all over the yard-- giving a nervous mother all the makings of a breakdown.

Nobody was hurt, unless you count my few frazzled nerves.

The tire tracks in the snow above (in my front yard) were from the Gator/sled event.

The snow began Friday at about 3:00.  I was working in Williamsburg, and as soon as I saw how quickly it was sticking to the roads, I left.

The Colonial Parkway was already covered by the time I made it there.

Route 17 traffic moved very slowly.

A skim of ice on Millers Cove

I passed several accidents and almost became a participant in one myself.  Coming down the hill just before Hodges and Bryant in Gloucester Court House, I tried to slow down, but my brakes locked up on me. I took my foot off, but the brake lights on the truck in front of me kept getting closer and closer.

Fortunately there was nobody in the next lane, and I was able to maneuver over there to avoid a disaster.

Route 14, the next to the last leg of my journey, was The Worst. Nobody was going over 15 miles per hour except, perhaps, for the man standing beside his overturned jeep on the edge of the woods. He didn't appear to be injured, but the Jeep didn't look so hot. He had to have been going fairly fast to make it as far off the road as he did.

My hour-long commute was almost two and a half hours that day. But I made it home safely, and my car wasn't turned upside down on the side of the road.

So there's that.

More slush around the dock.

Our cove off of Queens Creek, which back in the 1970s would freeze so solid my sisters and I could walk clear across it, has sported a thin film of slush for the past several days.

I don't think we'll ever see it freeze like that again.

These got a good workout this weekend.
I even wore them in Food Lion once.  

Although we didn't receive as much snow as I would have liked, we did have one day of a two hour commute and a near accident a good coating of snow, enough to build a silly snowman and slide around on a sled.

And enough to make it perfectly acceptable for me to wear zebra boots into the grocery store.

(Not that I needed an excuse.)

Edwards Creek

The Tree on Edwards Creek

The Tree and the Boat on Edwards Creek

The Boat on Edwards Creek

House on Edwards Creek

Who here is tired of hearing me say Edwards Creek?

CBW put your hand down.

These were all taken from Edwards Creek the public landing over on Edwards Creek Gwynn's Island.  Many stories from my youth involve this particular landing, one of which has to do with driving on this dock, which at the time was not only perfectly acceptable but quite legal, surprisingly.

Another story, however, involves a practice which may have been perfectly acceptable among my peers, but was no doubt pushing the limits of what was actually legal.

Once upon a time, late one summer evening, Chesapeake Bay Teenager, her Middle Sister and some mutual acquaintances drove over to the island and up onto this public landing on Edwards Creek in case I haven't said it enough already.  For those who don't know, not only is a public landing a dock that anyone can visit, it's also a dock that most anyone can tie up to, within reason.

I mean they're not going to allow the QE 2 to pull up there and disembark passengers, but mostly that's because the QE 2 draws just a tad more water than can be found in Edwards Creek.  Oops.  I said it again.

Anyway, my point is there are usually boats tied up to this public landing.  Boats whose owners are usually elsewhere, as in nowhere near the public landing.

It's really tempting easy to climb aboard these owner-less boats which are tied up to this very public landing.

It's even easier to slip the rope off the pole and push off for a spell.

It's even more fun to do this with a bunch of silly, giggly, teenaged friends.

We're not talking about any great big boat or anything, this was just your average rowboat.  I'm sure if the owner were there and we had asked, he would have said I don't think so, not in this lifetime sure, help yourself.  It just so happens he wasn't there to ask.

So we took a spin around That Creek and returned it safely to the dock afterwards.

And to this day Chesapeake Bay Woman feels guilty about it.

The End.

p.s. She also feels guilty about some similar sorts of antics involving yachts tied up at the Islander, but that's a story for another day, even though no yachts were harmed in that story either. 


p.s.s.t.  CBW is proud to announce she is now a law-abiding citizen who may be an accidental trespasser with good intentions but most definitely is not someone who would temporarily steal borrow a boat without asking.  She also does not condone the behavior above and if she ever found out her own children did such a thing there'd be a time goin' on.  


Also, if CB Mother is reading, I blame Middle Sister, who may or may not have actually even been a participant in the Edwards Creek Boat Caper--but I think she was, and it's my job as older sister to cast the blame there, in the middle.