It feels like New England weather came for a visit and after overstaying its welcome finally went home. Most importantly the roads look like they’re paved again. Over the last few weeks (man it feels weird to say that, has it really been that long?) we’ve had cold + snow + rain + freezing rain + ice. And because clearing roads isn’t something they really commit to out here our roads, after all the snow, went from packed snow (slick), to ice (super mind blindingly slick) to so veriform and deeply rutted (and still wicked slick!!), that it made me cringe at what was happening to my alignment. At this point a digression: A word on a subject near to my heart. Snow plows. Here’s an old school VT plow. Today they’re not quite that badass. Today they’re built out of a 10 ton dump with a huge blade mounted on the front and a monster pet/car/pedestrian destroying wing blade hanging off the side. I still remember with a twinge of fear the amount of damage done to a guard rail by one of these plows. In my snot nose punk days I had a job with the VT DOT and the guy I was riding with one day starts relating – pretty causually – “So last winter I was plowing the Lincoln gap”, which is a COMPLETLY SISSOR CRAZY steap notch in the green mountains that we were driving on at the time, “and I lost my brakes so I had to drop my wing on the guard rail and just ride it till I stopped”. This as I’m seeing completely trashed the guardrail I beams for like half a mile (and this was no wambie-pambie cable guard rail). If the machines ever rise and throw off the yoke of the human oppressors I’m going to be worried about the plows. Ok, ok this is totally the long way around but here’s my immediate point. It snows, I expect plows to come and clean up the roads, but what do I see? These little state body dump trucks with a tiny little blade on the front and a strip of rubber running along the business edge (got to save those road turtles) and this only on “arterial” roads. This is the city’s response to snow. The good old boys who are the business end of the VTDOT would die of shame if they had let a foot or so of snowfall spread over a week paralyze the city. I know, I know, it doesn’t snow all the time, it’s a waste of money, they just wanted to have the roads pack out so the 4x4s could move about without a lot of effort. All of this I know but it went on for more than a week. It’s just unacceptable. More than anything I think I’m embarrassed for them. OK digression over. No more confused ranting about snow removal. So as the title implies the roads have melted clear. The traffic is back and aside from having to use cat like reflexes ocationally to avoid the tangled clusters of chain/cable that have escaped their wheel well all seems pretty normal. I could go on about the bone head things I saw, my favorite being the huge 4×4 truck riding my back bumper with freezing rain falling out of the sky because the driver hadn’t figured out that putting it in 4 wheel drive didn’t double his breaking capacity – or the fact that his vehicle was 3 times as heavy as a typical passenger car, but it feels self defeating. I’m just happy it’s back to just raining. Let’s hope that’s it for this winter.