Bad Traffic

On Sunday St. Louis was walloped with snow. On Monday the snow in the street was deep and all but the stubborn took a day off from work. On Tuesday the roads remained a mess but it was business as usual. In general, I commute to work by bike, even in the winter, but I have my limits. Because of the snow on Tuesday I rode with Katie to her work downtown and caught a train to my work in midtown. 

Katie worked a standard day, getting off around five, and had a hellish commute home with rush hour and the road conditions. Her normally 15-minute commute ended up taking an hour and a half. When she reached home she told me in no uncertain terms would she get in the car again that night. Unfortunately, I ended up working a 12-hour day and have a 2-mile gap between the closest train stop and our apartment. 

From the train stop the most logical way to get home is the bus, which would take me to within a couple of blocks of our place. I have a long-standing hatred of unreliable bus schedules, however, so if I have almost any other option I refuse to take the bus.* 

So, on a cold-late Tuesday night along poorly-shoveled sidewalks, I walked. Not that it was a heroic effort, but I'm a marshmallow and it had been a long day. 

It turns out a cold walk home after a long day is a good way to unwind. I enjoyed it enough that I decided to do the same thing on Wednesday. This time I packed my camera and tripod to get some long exposure night shots.  The picture above is one of them. In my opinion, this is a good photo but I think its a great concept – one worth working on. Here, the tripod was precariously perched in a snow bank, and it was windy, so city skyline isn't as sharp as I would like. I'd also like to frame the photo so that the traffic blur takes a more dominate role in the image and the skyline isn't quite so obscured by the trees. I doubt if I can get that shot from this particular location but, again, its something worth working on. 

*I should note that I have no experience with the St. Louis bus system. My hatred of buses comes from the Bloomington Indiana system where I waited too many times for a bus running 20 minutes late to ride a distance that takes me 20 minutes to walk. Damn aggravating.