If Spring is God's Postcard, He has Played a Joke on the North

If you live in a cold, snowy climate (like upstate NY) you know the feeling just about March.....total winter burnout.  Hence, we were scheduled to leave the Binghamton area today for the sunny south.

But Binghamton wasn't going to let us go easily.

We got up about 5am.  Dressed, made coffee, packed what wasn't already in the car.  I was putting gloves in my coat pockets when.....

My back.  Huge spasm.  OUCHHHHHH

I spent the next 45 minutes trying to get to the point where I could leave the house and get to the car.  Wondering if I should even try to travel.  Trying to remember when my chiropractor opened on Mondays.  But it wasn't near as bad as the back meltdown of a year and a half ago that lead to 4 months of physical therapy, various chiropractic visits and an MRI.  So I decided to try it, I was so desperate to experience spring.

Not so fast.  It was sleeting outside.  It was crunchy and I was wearing sneakers. My wonderful spouse had put ice melt down and held my hand as I hobbled to the car.  The next 60 miles or so of driving was sleet, some freezing drizzle, snow.  As we got into Pennsylvania snow coated all the trees.  The sleet crunched under the tires.  It was still dark and a bit scary.  Would we make it to Scranton?

We stopped at Dobbs in Great Bend for their wonderful blueberry pancakes.  Spouse had an omelet.

Then, south.  From Lenox to Scranton it was totally snow and sleet.  Had to slow down to 40.  Turns out the delay due to my bath was to our disadvantage.

Finally, south of Scranton, the slushy mix was changing over to rain.  By the time we got to Hazleton, it was rain and....

Fog.  Deep fog.  And slush.

For the next 40 miles, fog.  Finally we started exiting the mountains and the fog stopped.

And then my son called.

He told me "you are lucky you left."  He left work about 7am and ended up driving home in freezing rain.  He said he barely made it home.

So our drive to Mt. Airy and my back cost us a lot of time, but we did get here.  No Andy Griffith tourism this time (we were too late - those stores close at 5) but there was the local Wal-Mart....which was another story.

Oh, about the title of this blog entry.  The "spring is God's postcard" was on a billboard next to a Pentecostal church in southern Virginia.

As for Binghamton, that same deity gave us spring this past week....and then yanked it away.

Yanked it 546 miles away, to be exact.