Normally I don't complain about weather, the government, and inefficiency. I leave that to other people and their Facebook statuses. However, I really hope whoever is in charge of Richmond, VA's salt supply is reading this - because you are incompetent.

In case you aren't a Richmond local, it weather'd yesterday. I'm not sure about the means, but it's the ends that matter: I woke up on Wednesday to a city coated in ice. It's not like we didn't know this was coming. Since Saturday the forecast predicted something. And since Tuesday did not reach above freezing, did you not expect whatever precipitation that came down would not turn to ice? Do you not believe in the water cycle?

No, mayor/city planner/fool, I'm not retroactively asking that you should have stopped the sleet/rain/snow/whatever monster it was. You see, I don't believe in time travel; I believe in ice. Therefore, I'm asking: Why didn't you put salt down?!

Yes, I see you put salt down after the fact, but it's bit too little too late, to quote JoJo. All you did was add white to the white.

I almost wonder if you're one of those northerners who mutter how I need to grow some when I narrate all the fender benders I saw because you come from the Land of Six Feet of Snow. (And you can suck on antifreeze, because why should southerners invest in specialized tires and an army of snowplows for the one or two days a year when Elsa drops by and we can just sleep in instead of battling our way to work?) But I know you're not a northerner because you salted after the ice (you idiot).

Let me recount my commute to you: I awoke, saw the ice, and put on my duck boots. Because duck boots are made for hard weather, aren't they, Mainers? Apparently not; I now doubt the thought process of rubber soles on ice (?!?!). Anyway, I walk to work daily, so I'm going to walk today, but by walk, I mean slide. While the roads weren't friendly, I definitely think they were friendlier than the sidewalks. At the point where the sidewalk sloped downhill and I was sliding from tree to lamppost to side of building, I decided I needed a bus. The stop was one street over; I could make it. Alas, the cutover street I chose had yet to see sunlight aka death awaited me. Thankfully, I made do clinging to gateposts of some parking lot.

So the bus comes. I'm afraid it will just slide by the stop, but phew, I'm on it. We gingerly make our way downtown. My roommate rode a different bus to work. She told me that on her ride the driver suddenly called out, "We are sliding, hold on!" (This reminds me of the time in undergrad I was in a taxi cab on a snowy night and the driver asked my companions and I if we thought we'd make it up the hill. You better bloody make it.) Another friend said they saw a SUV misjudge their turn and careen onto a sidewalk where pedestrians were standing. (I wish I could have seen that. Sounds dangerous!)

We're three blocks from my building when the traffic is deadlocked. I debate asking to get off when the bus turns - and starts driving down another street, and then another.

Me: No . . . where are you going? Driver! Stop!

I took this bus with the sole purpose of not walking. Ultimately, we ended up five blocks from my building, and I had to skate there. I considered scooting down the sidewalk on my butt when I came to another hill.

All I have to say is, ma'am/sir, where was the salt?