A Dark, Icy Start

I mark the start of our journey as last night when the power went out. The ice storm started sometime around 8pm, and at about 10:30 pm, the power at our house suddenly went out. Everything was dark except the light of the waxing moon on the layer of ice encasing the trees. With all the power out, the house was silent except for the occasional loud crack of a branch breaking, followed by the shatter-cascade of ice.

Fortunately, we'd already finished packing, so we caught a couple hours' sleep before starting the treacherous drive to the airport. We got up at 1:30am with the power still out to get ready for the drive to Boston. We'd planned to leave at 3am, but gave ourselves an extra hour due to the ice. Heidi's brother Chris took us to the airport. The first obstacle was in our own driveway--a couple birch trees, weighed down by ice, were bent across the driveway, blocking our path. Fortunately, the same flexibility that lets them bend over the driveway let me bend them to the side while Chris drove the car past.

The next obstacle was a downed branch on our road. We had to turn around, but fortunately, the other route to the highway was passable. Passable, not clear--there was debris from downed branches all over the road, as if the branches exploded when they broke, leaving rubble of ice and wood scattered across our path. Things improved as we got to the highway, though there was the occasional tree leaning over into the right lane, heavy with ice. As we neared Boston, the ice turned to water, and hydroplaning was a bigger danger than slipping. Chris got us there in once piece, though (and got himself back home safely).

I'd feared that our flight might be delayed, but we actually got on an earlier flight. The rep at the Delta gate was eager to get us out of Boston before it got any worse and put us on an earlier flight. We're at JFK airport in NY now, waiting for the Korean Air desk to open, so we can swap our Delta boarding passes for Korean Air boarding passes for our 12:50 flight to Seoul. This next leg of the journey is 14 hours....