When I called Christy at 1pm, I was already heading out the door and most of my coworkers were doing the same. I quickly brushed off the car, exchanged some perfunctory “Drive Safe” warnings to other early evacuees and hopped in the car. My first sign that something was horribly wrong came when I left the parking lot and got to the first traffic light. I know there was a traffic light there because I could clearly see the solid red light blazing through the snow like Rudolph’s nose, but the cars beneath it seemed almost completely oblivious to things like lanes and lights. By the haphazard arrangement of automobiles, you would almost assume that an accident occurred, but the complete absence of broken glass, bent metal, or bewildered drivers surveying their cars clearly indicated that no collision had taken place. I can honestly say that I have never experienced gridlock quite like this. The roadways throughout the city of Burlington, Massachusetts had become a nearly impossible mess.

Every effort I made to skirt what seemed like the worst of the logjam always managed to land me in the middle of another. Mall road, Middlesex Turnpike, Old Billerica Road, 3A; I tried them all and everywhere I went I found more and more evidence that every single automobile in northern New England had somehow ended up in Burlington. By 2pm, I managed to make it to 62 and was within site of Route 3 North. By 2:45, I had moved no more than 100 feet and I could see that in the same period of time the cars that were on one side of the overpass ahead of me had, at the very least, made it across. On the ramp cars were struggling mightily to claw their way up the ramp and on to the highway above. Cars were sliding side to side and the most expensive version of bumper cars was just starting to unfold right before my eyes. I only counted three actual collisions, but it was enough to bring the drivers out from behind their steering wheels to survey the damage and apparently determine that it wasn’t worth their time, energy, or body temperature to sit there and swap insurance information.

On the drive back to work, I saw a group of men pushing car after car up a steep little hill by the 128 on ramp. They’d push them to the top and run back down to get the next one. I watched this five or six guys work for the better part of an hour from the other side of the median. They fell down, damn near got run over multiple times, and just kept picking each other up again and get back to pushing and cleaning the ice and slush off people’s wiper blades. Every once in a while one of them would hop back in their car and continue on their way and miraculously somebody would stop and take their place.

By 5:00pm, I arrived back at the office and found that many of my coworkers had at some point in their commute home come to the same realization that perhaps they should try again later. We gathered around by the windows and swapped stories about our experiences and collected news from a variety of sources. “So and So just called. He just got home and he lives in Woburn!” We got reports from family members, radio, and of course the Internet. We heard reports that the highway department didn’t have any plows on the roads before the storm hit and that the State Police didn’t have any extra patrols planned. The Governor and Mayor of Boston whined that they didn’t expect so many people to leave work early, but had themselves closed schools, sent staffers home, instituted parking bans, and encouraged private enterprises to close early before the first snowflake had even hit the ground.

Around 4:00pm, someone got a phone call from a coworker who had broken down on 128N in a travel lane and was unable to move her car. Traffic was flowing around her, she didn’t have heat and her cell phone was getting low. A few people sprung in to action, they called the State Police, family members, and even arranged for a tow truck to go get her. After two hours went by, one of the guys in my group tried to go out and get her. He didn’t get far before he realized that there was just no way he was going to get to her. He reluctantly came back to the office and hoped like the rest of us that somebody would get to her soon. At 7:30 we finally received the call that the police and tow truck had arrived. They towed her to the Woburn Mall and another coworker who lives in the same town as her left to pick her up and bring her the rest of the way home to Salem, NH. I’m sure neither one of them is even home right now.

By 8:00, I decided to make my second attempt. The reports on Route 3 North were good and my only concern was getting out of Burlington. Fortunately, the city had thinned out considerably, but was still more congested than it normally is at 8pm. The highway was slow going at first, but picked up fairly early on. By the time I hit Billerica, I came up on a phalanx of snow plows in an flying V pattern. They were moving slowly and given how bad the roads were, was thoroughly amazed that I had been so close behind them. I could clearly see the sparks from their plows grating on the pavement, yet the snow and ice seemed almost impervious to them. Somehow all of the traffic managed to condense in to a single lane and file past them one by one without ever dropping below 20 mph. Once we were out in front of the plows it became more apparent that they were in fact making an impact. Fortunately, the traffic was able to spread out and disperse without the plows and allow each driver to move at their own pace. From there on out the drive became much easier on the blood pressure, except for the occasional jerk in their SUV barreling north at a high rate of speed. Interestingly enough, once I hit the NH border the roads opened up, the lanes were clearer, and Policemen and plows were virtually everywhere.

Today was a day I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I saw some bad weather, bad driving, bad planning, and some really good people.