Yesterday started out as a rather unremarkable day. I exercised vigorously in the morning (I try to play ice hockey with a group of ex-colleagues and friends regularly – fantastic work out), attended meetings, met an old colleague who had some fantastic insights into my business and met someone new. A collage of different events – but relatively uneventful.

Until (insert ominous music) 6 p.m. when I went to leave the office. My assistant was still there and I asked why. It turned out that her husband was picking her up. He had left 2 hours ago and still was not there …. Oh no.

I looked outside. Sure, it is cold – we are suffering through a bitter cold snap with wind chill in the –20 range. But there wasn’t any snow falling and while we have had a bunch of snow, we were not suffering through the craziness that trapped hundreds of motorists west of us.

I hoped … only to have that hope dashed like a Kookaburra dashes the life from snakes that it catches (More on that in a second).

Now I don’t mind people driving slowly for a reason. I can even understand slow downs due to accidents, although I do wish the police would get on with it – an accident scene should disappear in no more than 15 minutes after a police officer arrives unless there is a fatality … Goodness knows the tow trucks are always sitting there ready to go. Really, what do they accomplish spending 2 hours on the side of the road documenting one guy rear-ending another? I digress.

The road was clear. The snow had been removed. No snow was in the air. No snow was blowing. The radio was not announcing a massive wave of road blocking accidents. For some, inexplicable reason, everyone had lost their will to drive at a normal pace, resigned to 10 KM/hr.

In these situations, you have two choices. You can turn into the Winnebago man (Warning – not office friendly) or you can figure out how to make the best of it. As an aside, I had just watched the amazing BBC Storyville documentary on Jack Rebney – the angriest man in the world – the night before (LOL).

I decided to make the most of it. One downside of living closer to the office is that I don’t listen to as many audio books these days. With a 35 minute commute, it is hard to ‘get into it’, one of the upsides of my old commute a few years ago of an hour.

I popped open Audible and queued up David Sedaris: Live for your Listening Pleasure and spent the next two hours (yes .. two hours) enjoying myself and laughing out loud while many around me moaned and wept. I am now a huge fan, his essays are insightful and absolutely hilarious.

So I arrived with a smile on my face, and proceeded to share David’s story about how people speak with accents, the Nicaragua story, with my wife. All was great. I climbed into bed, closed my eyes just as I heard ….. the ‘CHIRP’.