Just slow the hell down, guys

Queenie drove 750 kilometres yesterday. It was a long drive, interspaced with meetings, but a long drive in solitude. A long drive in solitude generally results in a long think.

Yesterday was a long drive in varying winter driving conditions - terrifying black ice conditions in complete darkness along the airport highway, a long, slow dawn up towards Truro, the brightening sky streaming rose pink shadows onto the snow covered landscape, more black ice, then wind and blowing snow on the hills near Pictou, passing an accident near Exit 21, a woman sitting weeping in her car as the police try to pull her out of a snowbank.

I do this driving because I live here now and I have to learn. I don't take any risks and today I am not driving to Amherst because the forecast is bad and Himself said no.

I think that Himself is a little protective of me driving and I probably would have made it, but the deal is that if Himself says no I don't go.

Normally I don't pay much attention to other people's views on stuff or let other people dictate my actions, but in this case if I ignore his request and travel, he would spend all day worrying about me and waiting for text messages to say that I have reached pre-agreed milestones safely.

I suppose part of loving someone involves compromise so they don't spend their day worrying about you for no reason apart from the fact that you are a stubborn git who takes work too seriously.

Commitment to work = good; injury or death because of it = egotistical stupidity.

Also, it is an intelligent choice to listen to the advice of a local who drives for a living and who is spending the winter clearing snow so that people can drive safely, so who knows what he is talking about.

Also it is the anniversary of the day I could have died on the same road while a passenger in another vehicle. With a much more experienced driver.

The portents were all telling me the same thing.

But yesterday was different as the forecast was progressively better rather than worse.

Finally, around nine am, brilliant sunshine emerged to etch the landscape onto my eye all through Guysborough County. The sunshine made it easier to go off-highway onto snow-covered roads into Sherbrooke, warmed up the road during a slippery drive along the riverbank to my last meeting, and finally, I turned for home, driving three hours into a deep orange sunset along the Eastern Shore. So bright I couldn't see the winding road.

A lotta scary moments. A lotta impatient drivers overtaking me when they shouldn't have.

A lotta thinking.

Life is so precious. Why are people in such a hurry? Why do people insist on taking such risks? Do they not stop to think about the cost of a mistake in these circumstances?

What about my life? Do they have the right to make that decision if it affects me?

I don't think so.

I don't think they have the right to make the choice for themselves, because everyone has someone who is worrying about them on the road somewhere.

I want to pay special tribute to the nice driver from Seaboard's who overtook me at 160kph near the airport in complete darkness, with black ice, zero visibility and blowing snow from the lake.

Thanks dude.

Your backwash sprayed my mirror with icy slush that my wipers couldn't get rid of.

I had to pull over on the AIRPORT HIGHWAY where nobody dares to pull off because the lanes are so confusing.

I had to spend three minutes finding the stupid hazard lights in the stupid dark in the stupid hire car, praying nobody would thump into me.

I had to get out of the car in minus 12 temperatures ON THE HIGHWAY IN THE DARK and clean my windshield off with my lunchbag because the cleaner brush couldn't get the crud off my car, it was so encrusted with the oily dirt from your badly kept wheels.

I had to sit back into the car with the heater on ROAR for five minutes so I could actually feel my foot enough to put it back on the accelerator.

I had to talk myself into pulling back out onto the road. "Queenie, you can't spend the rest of your life on the highway, so you may as well go somewhere there is coffee at least."

Who the hell do you think you are?

And thanks to the Eisener driver who did the same thing about twenty miles later.

Thanks to the companies that cut back on drivers so that these guys face impossible deadlines and consequently do this to other people.

And thanks to the people who have 'surveillance cameras' on that highway that everyone knows are empty so that they don't have to pay cops to put up speed traps.

I hate the airport highway.

Ironically, it is the Veterans Highway. A big sign at either end solemnly says: Lest we forget.

It should be renamed, Lest we be five minutes late.

As I mentioned, I spent time thinking about the choices people make.

Pretty dark thinking all round all day, but that was because I spent most of the day thinking about the way loss is forced on some people.

Life is always precious but sometimes you lose people you just shouldn't lose yet. I spent a lotta time yesterday thinking about one such person, a neighbour who passed away a few weeks ago. I have not been thinking about her death much, because I still can't believe she is gone. I cannot believe that her family have to go through this loss and go through it without her.

She was such a force of life. She literally was a sunbeam. Her smile was the epicentre of that sunbeam. Every picture I have of her in my head, pictures stretching back thirty four years, to when I was a toddler and she was about seven, are of her smiling.

Even yesterday, with all day to think about it, coming to terms with the fact that she is gone on such a beautiful beautiful beautiful day was almost impossible.

Maybe she was somewhere in the cosmos, helping the dawn turn the snow rose pink with her smile ...

Maybe ...

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,

I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.