Snowy Day Solution

It was just over two years ago that I was driving down a slushy road in Boulder when this happened:

One moment I was happily heading off on errands, the next moment I lost control of my car on a curvy stretch (even though I was driving at my usual slowpoke speed), the moment after that I smacked into a huge utility pole, and suddenly it was A TERRIBLE HORRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD DAY.

I have since felt disinclined to drive in slush, sleet, ice, or snow.

This morning I had a scheduled author visit to Namaqua Elementary School in Loveland, about an hour's drive from Boulder. But the weather forecast called for my least-favorite kind of precipitation to come falling from the sky. WAHHH! I warned my host that I might need to cancel if the roads were bad, wimpy baby that I have become, wimpy baby that I intend to stay. But, oh, it's a sad thing to cancel a school visit when it was set up months ago, and the kids are looking forward to it, and there's no guarantee that the same kind of white stuff won't fall from the sky on an alternate date.

Instead a brilliant idea popped into my brain.

The snow wasn't expected until 6:30 a.m. What if I left home at 5:30? I'd arrive at Loveland an hour and a half before school opened at 8, but surely Loveland has coffee shops, and I adore writing in coffee shops. I'd still have to drive home afterward, of course, but I'd be in no rush and could dawdle my way back down to Boulder.

Ooh!

So early this morning I drove for an hour in the darkness, thankful every minute that I wasn't driving in any whiteness. The snow started falling - fast and furious - a few minutes before I arrived at the lovely Coffee Tree cafe on Fourth Street.

For the next hour I sat as snug and cozy as could be, scribbling down picture ideas, as I signed up for the 12 x 12 picture book challenge (to write a picture book each month for the year) and hadn't yet done anything toward meeting January's goal.

The drive to the school was still bad, but at least it was bad for three miles instead of thirty. The kids at Namaqua Elementary were great, and I even had another picture book idea pop into my head as I walked down the halls studying the student work on display. The drive home was bad, too, but at least the weather was now sunny.

Jubilant over my own cleverness, I borrowed Peter Pan's words and crowed to myself, "How clever I am! Oh, the cleverness of me!"

Admittedly, it isn't the VERY best evidence of cleverness to be someone who occasionally totals a car on a slippery road. But it's hard to beat the cleverness of giving myself the treat of an hour spent writing in a charming cafe while also driving an un-smashed car to Loveland and back on a snowy day.