Thanks to the promise of some inbound snow in Virginia Beach Friday, I was sent home early and relieved of my scheduled duties with the team of administrators at Salem High School. I hit the road around 9 am.
After four hours of driving, I casually stopped off in Kernersville to stock up on groceries for the coming stretch of days at home working locally, and then I hit the road for the final few miles of the trip to Winston-Salem.
Alas, about 4 miles from home, I had my first experience not just of a traffic jam, but of an interstate shut-down resulting from a multi-vehicle crash. I've been in jams before, of course, and I continue to consider myself lucky with all my driving that it doesn't occur more often.
While at a standstill, I was checking my Twitter feed to see what news there was and to get updates on how bad the wreck was and how long the shut-down was expected to last. The initial word wasn't good: possibly 2-3 hours!
So close to home, having driven about four-and-a-half hours, and with groceries in the trunk! But what about the folks caught in that accident? It sounded bad, and I know too well how everything can change in an instant. After about a 70-minute standstill just inside the Winston-Salem city limits, the left lane opened up again. I quickly reached the scene of the wreck and it looked like two cars and a tractor-trailer, and the one Volvo looked like it was half of its former self.
In spite of all those good groceries I'd bought, I contented myself with a regularly-appearing Roediger House meal made from staples on hand, instead of getting all fancy with it. On that chilly Friday night, it was ultimate cream of tomato soup with grilled cheese paninis, and it was all most satisfying.
"Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup," from Cook's Illustrated, November 1999. Recipe can also be found online at Cookography.com.
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