Outside Counsel

I knew the Thruway would be closed, and my navigation app was directing past it- a moot point, because the on ramp was blocked by a marooned tractor-trailer. A short way beyond that I saw a snowplow on its side in the ditch to my left, so it was clear that Erie, Pennsylvania had been hit hard by the snowstorm the night before. My rental car was a Dodge Challenger, which has to be in the top five of terrible cars in snow, so I was fine with the idea of just taking it easy on the back roads. Routes 5 and 20 run from Erie to Buffalo, and although there were still some flakes in the air the radio updates told me that the strom had moved east, and was probably in Hamburg. I followed the traffic into Erie, and realized immediately that nothing had been plowed, and that the only path was the track the traffic that had gone before me had made. It quickly became obvious that the Challenger wasn't going to be kept under control at anything faster than 20 MPH. That was fine, because that was pretty much as fast as everyone else was moving. I proceeded a ways toward the harbor, and shortly realized that there was kind of a lot of oncoming traffic. This made things a little tricky, because any attempt to yeild some space, or to manover around the stuck tractor trailers on the right caused me to fishtail. After several miles of this I came upon a line of cars and a guy in a reflective vest directing the cars in front of me to turn around. I rolled down the window and asked what was going on, and was told that every detour out of town was blocked by stuck tractor-trailers. This was the only person I saw controlling traffic for the next several hours. I turned around, and started to look for streets with packed doen snow in order to try to find a course east. Topography became a new adventure. Every dip in the road had accumulated snow, and every rise had to be carefully negtiated because any loss of momentum risked getting stuck. I discovered this pretty quickly, but the first time I was able to rock the car out. The next time I got stuck was when a came upon a compact car with Michigan plat, traveling es spinning its wheels in the middle of the road. She wasn't going anywhere,and I wasn't until she was, so I got out and started pushing. Shortly I was joined by a third person and were were able to send the lady on her way. As we were doing this a line of cars was developing behind me, and when I tried to get underway I found that I was stuck. Because the Michigan lady was no longer blocking the way they started to go around me, but the guy that had helped me push stuck around and got me out. We pushed the Michigan lady outtwo more times and at no point did anyone with Pennsyvania plates get out of their cars to help us. The last time I said to the other guy, "I'm from Buffalo. In our culture we help people who are stuck," and he reveiled that he and his girlfriend were also from the Queen City of the Lakes. After the last time I worked my way back to a main road, and discovered several miles of parked tractor-trailers. At the end of the line was the Thruway entrance, which was full of drifting snow and the traditional stuck truck. As an additional treat this road, which turned out to be Route 20, was closed beyond that point. Come to find out there was a bridge out. I turned around and pulled into a McDonalds, where the Michigan lady and the other Buffalo people arrived shortly after me. All of this took around four hours. I dislike describing things as "surreal" but there was a definite Twilight Zone vibe about driving endlessly in a town with no exits. I had a burger and a Coke, and tried to find out what was happening on my phone. After about an hour- I'd say it was about 3:30 at this point, someone came in and said that the PA police had called the Quick-Fill nextdoor and reported the the eastbound Thruway was open. I proceeded back to the on ramp, and found that it was still blocked, so I turned around and got on the westbound Thruway for a couple of exits, got off, and got back on going east. At this point I was about 70 miles from Buffalo. There was only one eastbound land open, but I figured that once I got across the New York line things would improve. They did, for a bit, but once I was past Ripley the snow started up with a vengance, and I was back following the track at about 20 MPH. At some point I fell into line behind a plow, and continued there for the next two exits. My GPS wanted to divert me to ether 5 or 20, but the snow on the exit ramps was way to deep for me to consider venturing that way so I pressed on. It was at about this point that the rear window of my muscle car became completely obsured by snow. The snow continued, as did I moving at abuot 15 miles per hour, until I reached the downtown Buffalo exits, where there was no snow, the roads were completely dry, and I was able to return my rental. I'm no rookie. I've driven through some storms in my time, but I never experinced anything like this before. Erie Pennsylvanians, what the hell is wrong with you? Erie Pensylvania, how come you didn't shut things down the night before, instead of letting trucks block every detour out of town? Where was the traffic control? Where were the emergency bulletins?