snow story

I've lost my camera somewhere, so I wasn't able to take a picture of the snow storm that blew into town the night before last. I've looked high and low for a week but the camera is nowhere to be found. But I do have a story of the snow storm that blew in. 
 
That morning I did my best to make it to the yoga class I teach at 7 AM. After my alarm woke me up, I poked my head from behind the curtain to look out into the jet black morning to see if there was a hint as to what kind of day was coming our way. I was dumbstruck. A snowstorm! Overnight the landscape was completely transformed. Yesterday had been a balmy plus 8 celsius when I pedaled home on my bike; now we were slapped into the middle of winter.

My heart sank as I saw the piles of snow burying the car. Strong wind gusts whipped the world into a white howling storm. Wasting no time, I pulled on my clothes and dashed out into the dark to clean off the car. My dashing changed to trudging when I opened the front door. Snow threatened to fall inside the tops of my knee-high boots as I trudged through high drifts. Using a snowbrush, I cleaned some of the snow off the top of the car, but it was too heavy and slow-going. I started to sweat. This is going to take me forever!

I trudged back into the house to telephone to say I would be late to teach yoga. I dashed back outside, cleaned the rest of the snow from the car, scraped the windows, then looked down the driveway. Our winter shovels are still in the garage! I trudged through the snow to the backyard to get the garden shovel; it was hopeless to try and get into the garage as the snow was too deep.

I was sweating and I hadn't even started shoveling! Maybe if I shovel out two tire paths behind the car I might manage to get out of the driveway and on my way.

With the wind howling in my ears, I set about digging in the dark, wishing it wasn't so early in the morning as otherwise I could get my husband up and get him to help me. Satisfied that I'd shoveled some of the snow out of the way, I jumped in the car and carefully backed out of the driveway onto the street, but as I live on a hilly street, and the snowplow had not yet come by, I could not get my car up the hill. I tried again and again, but my tires just spun in the snow. We had had rain yesterday, which obviously had frozen into ice, and the snow was layered on that. Before too long it was clear that I was going nowhere.

After my numerous failed attempts, I reversed the car, driving backwards down the hill. I couldn't see out the window or my rearview mirrors because of the darkness and blowing snow, so I had to open the window and stick my head out to see where I was going. When I got close to my house, I parked, then dashed into the house and called the gal at the front desk to tell her that I was hopelessly mired in the snow on my street, and to give my apologies to the participants as I cannot get off my street. No yoga this morning.

I ended up leaving the car in the boulevard by my driveway as I couldn't get it back into the driveway, which is on a slope, too. I worried how I was going to get to the university for my writing class, so I decided to walk to the bus stop right away and take the bus.

 I had to walk in the middle of the road as there was simply no place else to walk. At the end of the street, after slipping and sliding through the snow, I saw two men standing in a snowbank.

"Is this the bus stop?" I yelled against the wind. "Are you both waiting for the bus?"