once a month...

...and this is the weekend for it. I started several years ago driving up to TN on a regular basis. When I found myself with a diet that was dramatically deficient of vitamin 'P', after she married and moved north. We decided to compare calendars in December, agree on a time each month that might be workable. And I would take that weekend to go and visit. Occasionally it will happens she will be in GA, maybe Decatur or coming to Columbus, but mostly it's me driving up to visit her, along with her hubby and assorted animals/family of four-leggeds.

I knew to expect rain when I would be getting on the road this morning, so I was not surprised by the wetness. When I got home from work last night, the Weather Channel Addict warned me, saying it was going to be 'bad'. I asked what he thought I should do about it. He said he wanted me to be careful. I don't know if he thinks I do not have enough common sense to make an effort to be more cautious without his instruction. But apparently he does not think I am capable, or would consider the option of safe driving, unless I am specifically told to do so. Hmmmm....

I doubt driving in the rain is anyone's first choice. I really don't mind it all that much, knowing if there is a destination in mind, to get in the car and go is the only way to get there. Plus having done so much driving in the wee hours of early morning over recent years, I am not particularly concerned about driving in the dark. But the combination of dark and wet is extremely stressful.

It's much harder to discern the dotted lines that delineate lanes with wet pavement and headlight glare. It's also vastly more difficult to see where you are going with all that constant mist that billows up from the wet roadway behind other vehicles, especially semi-tractor-trailer rigs with over a dozen wheels. And then there is the added factor of furiously flapping windshield wipers, necessary to make it all viewable.  So trying to be safe on highways that are twelve lanes six or seven lanes wide, with dare-devil speed-demon drivers in metro Atlanta is excruciating.

Which is why I got up at 4 a.m., to shower and get loaded up. So I could get underway by 5 o'clock and into the Decatur neighborhood before all those four million got on their way to work. Safely arrived in the metro, and headed to TN in the afternoon.