Day 52. A smoky haze hovered over the thruway, too cold at twenty-seven degrees to label it ground fog. A trace of snow lay in the still, frozen fields—chopped corn stubble with an occasional crow or hawk hovering over them. A young barren woods grew on my right as I sped past. The roads were dry from the sun and the heavy truck traffic on both the east and west bound lanes. I broke speed behind two side-by-side eighteen wheeled semis, slowed from seventy-five to sixty. Behind their black mud flaps, the tires spun flumes, dried road salt dust, clouds lifted from the asphalt.