In retrospect, driving from Oakland to Texas without checking the weather report or taking time zones into account was foolhardy. This is why I am never on time to anything; every trip I plan always seems perfectly reasonable to me until someone else reacts to it. By then it’s too late to change anything.
“You can’t drive from California to Austin,” my dad said, after laughing so hard he started wheezing when I mentioned I would be driving from California to Austin to attend the wedding of an old friend from college.
This, of course, only strengthened my resolve, for I thrive on adversity, much like our 26th President Teddy Roosevelt. ”I feel like I can, though,” I told him and the rest of my family of naysayers. “It feels like it would work.”
Later, when said friend from college called to say they’d changed the location of the venue from Austin to Lamesa (a solid six hours closer to California) due to a surprise flood, I took it as a sign of moral support from the universe. You can definitely do it, the floodwaters seemed to say. Your dad’s just a big old hater. Do it. Drive to Texas; it’ll be fine.
And it was fine, mostly. I spent the first night in a hotel in Winslow, Arizona, trying very hard to think of seven women at the same time and giggling every time I saw “Take It Easy” printed on my keycard.
“Why, I’ll be there with two hours to spare,” I said to myself in the car on the second day. “That’s a ridiculous amount of time.” (I really believed that! I still do believe that!)
Did you know that Texas has a different time from California? It is two hours ahead, I realized about four hours before getting there. Not a problem, I thought. (I do not still believe that.) Then I drove into this.
Why is there so much weather here, I asked myself. Why is it winter. This is the same — I didn’t go north or anything, I’m just going east, why is it colder in the east, why is there snow. Did you know that the official pastime of New Mexico is ice storms and not plowing the highways? So I skidded off the road facing the wrong direction once from some ice. No matter. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again. So the only road leading into West Texas had not one but two “ROAD CLOSED” road blockers. The road blockers did not extend across the entire road! If you really want to close a road, you should not just block half of it, because then very determined wedding guests will just drive around it, laughing softly to themselves. That’s not how you block a road, New Mexico state police.
(If I say I am coming to your wedding, I am coming to your wedding. If I don’t want to go, I just send my regrets.)
Anyhow. I left California early Friday morning; I ran into the wedding venue Saturday night roughly nineteen seconds before the bride walked down the aisle. It worked. I felt like it would work, and it worked; this has only strengthened my belief that I should always trust my instincts and that everything works out fine, even if you don’t plan the least little bit. It was a great wedding! Do you know that in Texas they put this cheese soup on everything? They call it queso, but it’s not the cotija you find on tacos or anything, it’s just this nice cheese soup. It was a great wedding.
At any rate. I write this so you can learn from my mistakes. I was going to start wending my way homeward after the wedding, but the weather decided to be another ice storm, so instead I spent the night at the most expensive Best Western in the world. (They were very nice, though. I do not begrudge the Best Western their customary rate.) I awoke to find my car enrobed in a prison of ice so thick that it completely destroyed the Liza Minelli CD case I used to de-ice it, until a very nice man offered me the use of his ice scraper, which worked much better.
“Are you really going to drive in this weather?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?” said the stupidest woman in the world, who blithely drove off into the Ice Kingdom that is Frozen West Texas. This time the roads were really closed, with human police officers standing in my way and everything. This time it took me five and a half hours to drive 140 miles, and I fishtailed into a complete 360º about four times, despite driving 25 miles an hour with roughly eight hands glued to the wheel.
The thing about the West Texas/Eastern New Mexico area, though, is that there’s nowhere to go if you need to get off the road. You might as well just keep going forward, which I did, right until I hit some black ice and introduced the front of my car into a snow-filled ditch. The ditch seemed rather indifferent to have us, but I found the rest a refreshing change of pace. Then I called my mother, because I enjoy worrying her.
“Is there a particular trick to getting your car out of a ditch it’s stuck in that I should know about?” (There is not.)
One technique that I found helpful, though, is Brenda. Who is Brenda? Brenda is the extremely helpful ENMU student who stops her car when she sees you by the side of the road and asks if you need help. (For this trick to work, you have to say “yes, thanks awfully.”) Brenda then applies her considerable strength to the front of your car, while you sort of uselessly kick at the snow under your front tires and sort of try to pull at it while also putting it in reverse.
The two of you do this for a while, occasionally trading life stories, until your car pops back onto the road. Then you hug her repeatedly, and with great force, and tell her she is a sweatshirted angel. You regret having only brought flip-flops and high heels (for the wedding) on this trip.
Brenda then gets back in her car, presumably to find wounded baby birds and nurse them back to health, while you crawl along to the next town, which happens to be Portales, where you immediately ensconce yourself in a Holiday Inn Express and then order two sandwiches from Subway and you eat them both and you’re there now and you’re writing this story and you’re never going to leave this room ever again, not never ever, please direct all written correspondence to Mallory Ortberg, C/O Holiday Inn Express, Portales, New Mexico, Ice Kingdom.
In conclusion: never drive anywhere, never do anything. Please share your scariest driving stories in the comments, that I may draw strength from them.
Tags: californians should never be allowed to leave the state without protection, help me brenda, road trips, things mallory does for no reason, travels
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Oh good lord. And just last week I was thinking, “Well thank goodness that got canceled so I don’t have to drive to Springfield.” 21+ hours is inconceivable to me even under less dire circumstances. I am glad you survived!
I’m not home yet!!!!
Oh great. Now, on top of everything else, I have to fret about your safety, too.
Stay until spring?
Mallory, do you need help? Hit me up at l4ur3lz at g if you need anything.
1. on a narrow two lane road a truck swerved in front of us and the back of it narrowly missed taking out the front of our car by INCHES. Mr. Iceberg had to pull over for a minute after that one.
2. The time I didn’t stop and collided with another car and my Yaris hit a tree and the entire front was ripped in half and the wheels were kind of splayed and the airbags didn’t even go off.
I was on my way to a party, and I got out of the car and sat in the gutter sobbing, in a strapless cocktail frock and 3.5 inch heels and ants were crawling up my legs and biting my ass and the firemen asked if I’d like to sit in the truck because it was so hot that day and I sobbed that I didn’t deserve to. That was when I gave up driving.
Oh yeah and the time we drove from GA to Maine (and back, a week later) with three 18-month old babies and two dogs and didn’t even murder each other.
I mean, obviously it did come close.
Nooooo! You deserve to sit in a fire truck! We all do.
WHATEVER. Trees are overrated.
It’s a time-honored saying in the Emby household: Stay the hell out of NM. Land of Enchantment my ass. (OK, the northern half is pretty, but the southern half COME ON it’s just dirt.)
It’s sad the way the picturesque saguaros stop right at the Arizona border.
STRONGLY DISAGREE
But there’s green chile here!
Shoulda just stopped at the Grand Canyon.
I once drove from San Diego to Philadelphia in 4 days with a doberman and two cats in a Nissan 350Z convertible.
It was very difficult and trying.
It gave me a kidney stone.
Oh, dear. You are a saint of a human.
(I first read this as “4 dobermans” and was wondering about the logistics.)
The logistics were hard enough with one: because it’s a two seater car, I ended up taking out the passenger seat myself, shipping it separately, and placing my dog’s bed where the passenger seat otherwise would be. He would sit up and watch the world go by as we drove and we got so many double takes on the highway.
I stashed one cat in the mini space behind my seat (she was a small cat and it was a squishy carrier and I’M CLEARLY A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING) and stashed the other cat, who was BFF’s with the doberman, in the footspace on the passenger side. Nightmares.
This is AWESOME.
I can only guess how many conversations you had with those pets that went like this:
[MEOOOOOOOW MEOOOOOOW] [super-high-pitched whining sounds]
“It’s OK sweeties, it’s gonna be OK…”
[MEOOOOW MEOOOOW ARRRN ARRRN OOOOOOOOOOOW] [EEEEEE-doplhin-like-whine-EEEEEE]
“Everybody just calm down while mommy drives, OK!?!?!”
[RRRROOOOOW]
MALLORY! Promise me that before setting out on your next journey, you’ll look into things that could kill you.
Also, I thought we agreed that she should be eating BREADSTICKS, not Subway!
Once I drove across a lifeless winter expanse in Montana I now refer to as The Road of Certain Doom, which runs between Great Falls and Browning. I was trying to get to Great Falls for Thanksgiving, and driving a tiny Honda, during a wicked winter storm. In this part of the state, the wind doesn’t have any rules, and blows around like it owns the place (it does). It was about 5 degrees outside, so the snow was fine and dry, obscuring any view I might have.
I passed a few people in the ditch, and didn’t agree with the Universe that I should probs just pull into a hotel and wait it out. I went into the ranchland, out of town, following a giant truck because I could only see about seven feet in front of me. That truck, the selfish jerk, eventually went faster than I could follow, and I was alone in a seven-foot visual bubble, knowing I was headed for a large hill.
I found said hill when I did a 360 to the side of the road, and was narrowly missed by another giant ranch truck following me. I thought about crying, knew it wouldn’t do anything, and also knew if I stopped here there was a real chance I’d freeze.
So I ventured forth, terrified, at about 15 miles an hour with over 100 miles to go. When visibility cleared up, I picked up some speed, but then I hit this massive snowbank formed in the middle of the highway. Unbeknownst to me, a bottom piece of my beloved Honda had cracked and gotten pulled down during my drive, and I was essentially scooping snow into my engine every time I hit a berm. It made horrible noises, and I was freaked out. I stopped in the nearest town (about 60 miles from my destination), bought some duct tape, and tried taping my car back together. It was so cold that the tape froze and fell off almost immediately, and my hands got a bit frost bitten.
By the time I made it to my destination, I was a sweaty, crabby, thankful-to-be-alive hot mess. Upside: I got my car fixed for free the next day by a very compassionate Honda dealer.
ahhhhh!!!!!!
Holy shit
I drove through West Texas and New Mexico last winter. You’re 100% freaking right — there’s no where to get off the road. Of course, we were purposefully driving a long trip (Atlanta to Seattle). The golden rule of road-tripping: you will never arrive anywhere on time.
See, I don’t drive, so no skidding off the road for me. I once got stranded at an open-air suburban train station in a hailstorm though. That was very cold and unpleasant, especially after I accidentally stepped into a puddle while tromping around looking for a streetsign so I could give my boyfriend directions to the station. However, it only took forty minutes for him to dig his car out and come rescue me–slightly less time than it took for the next train to come–and he brought warm socks and a thermos of hot tea and rum, so I didn’t lose my foot after all.
Lesson: keep warm socks and rum in your car for winter traveling. Unless rum is illegal in your county, in which case: an airpot of eternally hot coffee. Alternately: live in a warm place and never visit winter wastelands, which was my strategy for the 24 years of my life before Philadelphia.
My dad and I did Phoenix to DC in 40 hours, straight through, switching off to drive/sleep. That was crazy. We drove into the path of a tornado and had to shelter in a gas station car port for a few hours, but otherwise the drive was uneventful.
lol @ “but otherwise the drive was uneventful”
This reminds me of the time I almost drove to Chaco Canyon (with an equally insane friend) from Chapel Hill, NC, for a long weekend. That was a remarkably bad (worse!) idea.
Watching this saga unfold on Twitter gave me a mixture of anxiety and giggles, and I am still waiting to hear how you made your money back on that Best Western continental breakfast.
last January i made a pretty leisurely drive from Boston to Madison, WI, and every person i told that plan to was like LOL (see Mallory’s dad) but then it was fine! so i am still living in a naive, hubristic delusion but i assume that one day this exact thing will happen to me.
My car from my youth got ruined when, while making a left turn near my house, an SUV came out of nowhere and hit the back of it. I spun into the side street I was turning into, the other car pulled over a few hundred feet away, looked at me, looked at his car, and then got back into his car, turned down the next side street, and disappeared forever. People came out from their houses and were amazed that people had survived after such noise. I was fine- shellshocked and terrified, but not even scratched. I was home from college and due to go back the next week to Seattle, where I owned no car. I’ve yet to drive since, more out of lack of necessity to own a car (I continued to live in Seattle where I didn’t think it was necessary, and now live in Holland where it’s even less necessary), but I’m not sure how much of that is just not wanting to go through that, or worse, again.
Yep. Trying to talk myself off the couch and into suiting up and shoveling right now. It’s not going that well.
One time on I-40 in western NM during a hailstorm a semi right in front of me over-corrected and tipped over, sliding across two lanes on its side, coming to rest on the opposite shoulder. I pulled over and got out, calling 911, and walked along the shoulder toward the truck. The asphault was covered in blood and debris. When I got closer and saw the driver climb out of his skyward-facing drivers’ side door, I realized the top of the trailer had come off, scattering blood donation bags all over the highway.
That’s awful, because people need those blood donations, but also kind of hilarious.
It was surreal.
Everybody go give blood, please, as soon as you can leave your homes/Portales motel rooms.
This is the opening scene of a horror movie where the heroine is violently confronted with surreal foreshadowing of everything to come.
I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.
You see, I live in the UK. For our anniversary we drove across the country to go camping and it took us six hours, and that’s only cause we got lost in one of the cities on our route and got caught in the rush hour traffic outside another.
(from Norfolk to Wales)
(Reminds me of a saying: THe difference between America and England is that the English think 100 miles is a long way and the Americans think 100 years is a long time)
All my Dutch friends want to go on a “road trip through America” mostly because I don’t think they can conceive of driving three hours and not seeing any major cities/towns.
I travelled from Norfolk (most easterly point in the UK) to Northumberland (very north) in about 8 hours on the train? Tricky, and tiring, but perfectly fine.
I realized I’d been here a long time when over the summer I had to go to Maastricht, which is 2 and a half hours away, and I started thinking it was so loooong.
When I lived in Norwich we went to Edinburgh for a few days, but it was snowing and the trains were constantly stopped because trains can’t drive over snow (which I would like to point out MAKES NO SENSE) and it took 15 hours. Everyone else was complaining and I was just ‘eh, couldn’t get from home to college in this much time, and I’m not wearing a seatbelt, what’s to complain about?’
My friend has traumatized a few foreign visitors by driving them across Nebraska. They’re all, “We’ve been driving for four hours and everything looks exactly the same! Time has stopped!”
I really think they haven’t thought this through and tell them that driving for hours across nowhere is actually super boring, but they still think it’s a cool idea.
I have not finished reading this yet but I had to come down here to let you now something. While you were in Winslow you probably saw at least 5 people I am related to. Maybe my Great Aunt even became your friend.
I have finished reading. That sounds terrifying and thank the Gods for Brenda. Rest easy and let the storm pass.
15 years ago the ex and I decided to drive to Santa Fe from San Jose via Route 66 in 2 days, for Christmas. A romantic getaway! So… sleet (starting in Fresno) and soon enough, snow. Thankfully at 2am the first day we found an oddly empty Best Western (La Quinta?) in Flagstaff, having disregarded the weather reports and his parents’ advice that we should have stopped in Barstow for the night.
Oh, did I forget to mention my in-laws were along for the ride? It was not the first time, nor unfortunately the last, that they invited themselves on our vacation. Puerto Vallarta is another delightful tale.
Not all horrible memories though; the beauty of a snow-covered Santa Fe was a balm on my mind after what turned out to be a 4 day trip. I flew home.
During my first yr of law school, bf & i decided it was a great idea to drive from DC to FL for Thanksgiving. I severely underestimated my anxiety levels at this pt and could only justify not studying for 8 hrs by renting Civil Procedure lectures on audiobook from the library which I played incessantly until bf– with great compassion– gently suggested we get some ice cream at that rest stop and maybe turn the radio on? 5 yrs later, though, he still has a pretty good grasp of venue and jurisdiction 🙂
Driving from western Massachusetts to Maryland via 84-81-83, for Thanksgiving several years ago: Encountered a snowstorm in central Pennsylvania and called to let my dad know we’d hit a little weather and would be later than expected. He immediately replied, the rising panic in his voice barely concealed, “You’re not between WHATCHAMACALLIT and WHOSYWHATSIS, are you?!”
We are so much on the same wavelength, Dad and I, that I knew the correct answer was “If you mean Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, unfortunately yes.”
Drive safe, Mallory. Don’t get stranded between Whatchamacallit and Whosywhatsis.
My parents and I once got stranded in a similar stretch of PA (where there are NO exits for miles & miles) due to a broken-down rental car. The only things off the exit we took were 2 abandoned gas stations. My mom said it felt like the beginning of a Stephen King novel.
I know. It’s also like a wind tunnel up there!
On the plus side, the Radisson Scranton turned out to be, no snark, one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed in. They’ve converted the central railroad station from when Scranton was a booming coal town into a hotel – there are huge marble pillars, majestic mosaics depicting the Forward March of Industry, etc. And since it’s in Scranton, it’s dirt cheap! Highly recommended for any and all Central PA strandings.
My car has broken down while passing through Wilkes-Barre 3 times, on 3 separate trips. Once my Toyota’s radiator melted on a brisk, mid-fall afternoon; the following year, in my husband’s Toyota, all the treads rolled right off the front tire while we were cruising at about 50mph, unfurling and flying past the windows in giant black curls (I think woke him up, as he slept in the passenger seat, when I screamed something like “Mothman!”); and finally, the “turbo” on our Subaru imploded mid-blizzard as we passed through a day or so before Christmas. This is how I have come to recognize that Wilkes-Barre is my personal Bermuda Triangle (we all have one, right?). I refuse to drive through it ever again, despite the fact that I now know where all the good mechanics and motels are.
Stay safe, Mallory! I’m a firm believer that you should drive everywhere because planes are terrible, which is why I’m going to buy an <a gref=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Amphicar_red.JPG”>Amphicar when the Subaru finally goes.
Oh, sorry, terrible typing, that’s Amphicar.
I know that stretch of road! Christmas day several years ago Mr. Camelia and I left New England in a pickup to drive to Florida. Yes, *that* Christmas day, the one that saw a record snowfall in that part of the world. And we were driving in it. Lots of snow driving experience between us, though. Mr. Camelia sucks at trusting anyone else’s experience, though, so he insisted on driving, leaving me to lean out the passenger window periodically to clear the snow off the windshield. Yes, the wipers were deployed, but they could not do the job alone, there was that much snow. I argued that he had to stop and find the effing snow brush to relieve my stumpy little arms or let me drive so he could deploy his arms-that-extend-forever. After we passed the snow plow at 12 mph, it was quickly evident we could go no farther without waiting for the plow. Did you know Denny’s is reliably open on Christmas Day?
Year before last, I drove from Northern Nevada to L.A. mid-November, and left at 3 in the afternoon. It was fine up north, no snow through the mountains, but then going down 99 , it started raining right after I left Sacramento. It was pouring by the time I hit Fresno. I hydroplaned while going 40mph a few times going through Bakersfield, and then there was Grapevine…
There was a freaking BLIZZARD up on Grapevine, and I was surrounded by a whole bunch of SoCalers that do not understand Snow. Protip: The answer to a blizzard is not to slam on your brakes having been going 70, along with everyone behind you, which was mostly me. It’s cool to slow down, but DO NOT SLAM ON YOUR BRAKES. And that’s how I found out that the SUV I borrowed is an SUV in name only, and hates being off road.
The Grapevine is literally the worst place in the world for this reason. It’s the only place in SoCal with weather and none of us understand it. Last time I crossed it I got stuck going 15 mph in the world’s worst fog. Thankfully my dad had just shown me what fog lights are.
We would either be awesome road trip buddies or catastrophic road trip buddies, and I am going to spend my lunch hour pleasantly imagining friend fic.
I admire your resolve in the face of ice storms and indifferent ditches! Despite growing up in Minnesota, I do not have many scary driving stories. This is possibly because the fleets of giant snow plows and sand trucks run 24/7/365 (Minnesota does not experience summer, generally speaking, which is mostly why I moved away).
However! I once drove home with a friend on Christmas Eve in a blizzard. Not quite as bad as yours, but we observed cars in the ditch at regular intervals along I-35 and saw semis stopped on the shoulder (“You know it’s bad if the semis pull over,” my friend observed darkly). Visibility was limited to about thirty or forty feet. We were forced to crawl along at 45 mph rather than the 75+ I prefer in Iowa (and which I consider necessary if one is to pass through Iowa before succumbing to the hypnosis of corn). Cars appeared in front of us from nowhere; I veered rapidly into the other lane as my friend clutched her seat and very loudly refrained from suggesting that maybe we should reduce our speed. We pulled over only once: I believe it was the Boondocks Motel and Cafe–a lovely getaway which I highly recommend should you ever find yourself in Iowa, Mallory–where I bought a tepid slice of pizza and immediately got back in the car because gdi we were GOING TO BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS. Hours later, I nearly fishtailed off our exit ramp because I was so happy to be back in Minnesota. I dropped my friend off, nearly got stuck in the snow, and had to drive round the block to build up speed and slingshot out of her neighborhood back onto the highway. I believe NASA uses roughly the same principle, but they probably deal with less precipitation.
My family may have had to peel my hands from the wheel when I arrived, but I did arrive, and the journey home had much better weather. I hope your return trip does too!
After my sister and I drove the two thousand miles from Chicago to the bay area without incident, my poor little car got completely totaled in a not-my-fault accident the very first time i drove it after unloading all my stuff. I spent my first evening in Oakland huddled on the corner of Telegraph & 40th holding all our road trip cds and waiting for the police to come while the wife of the guy who hit us (not even in the car at the time of the accident, she traveled to meet us just for this purpose) stood a few inches in front of my sister’s face and tried to berate her into saying it was an equal fault accident.
i will keep and treasure the guy’s business card forever, though, since it was ornately decorated with ivy leaves and simply said “Starbuck: an unlicensed counseling professional.” and he didn’t even have a last name and the back of the card says “printed for free from businesscards.com” or something and it’s perfect.
be safe, mallory!
The drive from my college to my hometown, which I did often and typically rather late at night because boyfriend and other social engagements, went over a pretty big river valley that had a habit of filling up with pea-soup fog whenever the fuck it felt like it. Many, many trips were made going about 15, old-lady’d up on the wheel, assuming that the bridge had dropped down into the river and I was about to fall to my doom OR run into the back of a semi. Fun!
SECOND was the trip to Chicago in April with the rain that was coming from EVERYWHERE (up! down! sideways!) and it was about all I could do to stay glued to the tail lights car in front of me and hope that they weren’t about to drive off the road. I could not see where the road was, where the other drivers were, where the fuck all the water was coming from, or really much of anything. I have no idea how long it lasted, as it felt like about an hour. DOUBLE FUN. (Why do I always get the worst weather on that drive?)
More recently, I was driving home after a fall rainstorm and was attempting to stop on a hill and my car just…didn’t. Just couldn’t be bothered. Slid through the three-way stop and came to a halt just shy of the large brick wall on the other side of the intersection. Mercifully it was late and nobody else was around.
ahhh!!!
Whenever you find yourself thinking “I know how to drive in snow, this will be fine. I bet there won’t even be anyone on the road because of all the snow!” you should stop right there, put the keys down, and drink some liquor instead, safe on your couch.
There was a snow storm around 6-7 years ago in RI that caught the entire state off guard (having finally unclenched from the Blizzard of 78, I guess) that ended up stranding lots of people on the highway. My boyfriend decided to go visit his friend about 10 miles away and spent about four hours on the highway just trying to get to an exit so he could turn around. I was safe at my parents’ watching the traffic channel, which offered a real time view of cars and trucks trying and failing to make the gentle incline onto the 6-10 connector and failing miserably.
Worst driving experience lately has been being a passenger while my father careens around the mountain roads of Sequoia National Park and Yosemite. I was in the middle of the backseat with my sunglasses on and my eyes closed. It was slightly better when my boyfriend took over, but not much. Every time we pulled onto a scenic overlook on the PCH, I thought we were all going to die. On the other hand, if I had actually been driving, we would probably still be inching our way through Yosemite.
You get NE bonus points for being the first to mention the Blizzard of ’78.
My mom spent the week following the Blizzard of ’78 stuck at work because she couldn’t get her car onto the road from the parking lot, and my father couldn’t get her because he was trapped at home. I, sensibly, was not born for another three and a half years.
My cousin was born DURING it. She was brought home from the hospital in a snow plow.
That is amazing.
She’s been outdoing me since birth, brat that she is. 😉
YES. A few years ago, for that big snowstorm right after Christmas, we made the error of saying, “Oh, it’s fine. I’ll leave MA ahead of the storm, and be to NY before it gets really bad.” …and then hit the road in a Mini. In fairness, I DID make it to my in-laws’, but only after narrowly missing being whalloped by a lady who lost control of her car on the Merritt, and stopping every half-mile from White Plains to Long Island to manually de-ice the winshield. Also, kudos to Mini for making a car that handles far better in rapidly accumulating snow than it has any right to.
You took the Merritt in a snowstorm?? I am quite impressed by your nerve!
I was trapped on the highway in Rhode Island in that snow storm! I was in Woonsocket and was going back to Providence at about 1pm – just as schools and offices closed for the storm. I sat in traffic until 10pm that night.
Wait… the PCH… between Sequoia and Yosemite? I don’t think the coast highway runs that far inland 🙂
I do know exactly which road you’re speaking of (I-395, right?) and I agree that it is terrifying. Not as terrifying as CA Hwy 3 (basically the ENTIRE stretch), or 299 but yes. I empathize.
It once took me and my sister 6 hours to get from NYC to Philadelphia because we forgot to print out Google maps directions in reverse for the way home. (We’re both very smart, in sheltered, academic settings.)
You are TR and this is your River of Doubt.
As a native MN the trick is community-minded people who will stop for you. You discovered it! Pay it forward if you can.
Can we have Mallory/Brenda for this Friday’s Femslash?
My sophomore year of college in Boston, I spent a long weekend at a national competition in Atlanta with my mom and then flew back to New England alone. My dad was supposed to meet me in Rhode Island and drive me back to campus that night. We flew into a heavy snowstorm (thanks, New England), so our plane got in late. Unbeknownst to me, my dad was inching through the snowstorm at great risk to car and limb, and despite my mom’s protestations, because he didn’t want me to be stuck at the airport or in a hotel alone after my long trip. When he finally got to the airport, he told me that there was no way we could drive to Boston that night and that we’d have to stay in a nearby hotel. Being a selfish brat and tired from my trip, I pitched a hissy fit and went to bed in stony silence.
My dad is still mostly sensible and self-sacrificing, and I am still mostly a selfish brat. My mom still helpfully reminds me of what an assholish thing that was, so maybe I’ll change someday.
This is not at all the same, but the first day I rode my new bike I forgot how I had to back pedal to break, my basket popped off going over a bump (er… uneven sidewalk), and to avoid hitting it, I biked straight into a tree instead.
I wear a helmet.
Once my car randomly caught fire. There was an enormous *whooump* and the back of the car sort of hiccup-jumped. I pulled over to the side and peered under. “Fire,” I said calmly. Then I skipped calling the police and went straight to emptying water bottles and jugs of apple cider on the flaming rear axle. Thankfully, someone passing by was a little more practical and very soon a fire truck showed up and a shot from a fire extinguisher took care of the problem. Two gallons of fresh cider, wasted.
I am really sad about the cider.
I LOLed at “‘Fire,’ I said calmly.”
Sorry for the loss of your cider 🙁
Apparently I am awesome at not panicking. Now I just need to work on sensible crisis decision-making.
I am also really sad about the loss of your cider.
My husband comes from a family that always has fire extinguishers in their cars (comes from restoring classic cars and doing crazy things like driving them places). I am becoming more and more convinced that they are right-minded people.
Canada! Canadians! I live at one end of a famously treacherous highway (the Coquihalla) and driving it in the winter means the ditches on either side of the road are littered with cars. Yikesss. Snow-driving! Terrifying!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgi-uvZ2w8
Oh god, I won’t even drive the Coquihalla in the winter. Nope, nope, nope, I’ll go the Fraser Canyon route south instead. It is somewhat less terrifying.
I was in a very slow motion Greyhound accident on the Coq once. We hit a tree at about 1km/hr and everyone cheered. Are you in Kamloops?
Kelowna! (Well, not anymore, technically, but it’s still home.)
There are stretches of I-35 in Iowa that are similar. I have seen ditchcounts of upwards of 1 car/mile for 30+ stretches in both directions. Yikes!
Sounds about right!
Have you seen the reality show called Highway thru Hell about the tow trucks who work that road? I’ve only watched one or two episodes, but it was actually pretty good (better than a show about tow trucks ought to be).
New Orleans to New York City in a U-haul to help a passive aggressive ex-friend move; she didn’t bother to tell me her driver’s license was expired until I arrived in New Orleans; I suppose actually renewing the driver’s license in the intervening months between when it expired and when I arrived was too much to expect. (Adding insult to injury: she was not packed when I arrived, and refused to leave for nine entire days even though I was a law student and didn’t have my books with me. Why 23-year-old me didn’t just give her the finger and fly back to New York is beyond the comprehension of 35-year-old me). The trip was long and terrifying – I drove the whole way and wasn’t sorry when I knocked off the side view mirror on a telephone pole in Brooklyn.
BRB, just had to post how much this line made me giggle:
The ditch seemed rather indifferent to have us, but I found the rest a refreshing change of pace. Then I called my mother, because I enjoy worrying her.
CHRIST JESUS MALLORY WHAT
Okay, so. I am from the middle of Ontario, and it is considered a rite of passage to have to drive in snowstorms over black ice (IT ALMOST TOOK YOUR AUNT (a different aunt, she was on 118, in storm it’s a nightmare surrounded by pink granite walls. Fetching in summer)). That being said, three short tales about being stupid about winter driving:
Once upon a time there was a new year’s party, where everyone was drinking but me, because I had the aged V6 K-Car with automatic transmission. The weather was near freezing, but not quite, and conditions generated frozen _fog_, which iced the roads and the puddles on them quite slick. There were seven people in the car, and it was about 3 in the morning, and we drove an hour across the Vankoughnet sideroad – 118 again – to get back. The car was good on the GO but not so much on the Stop, due to a lasting manufacturing defect relating to its habit of cracking brake drums.
Also, unrelated, I once drove home to Canada from Cleveland in a whiteout, cast to my elbow with a badly-broken dominant hand, in the same car, also because I was the only one without a hangover.
In an entirely separate incident, also in that car, a group of five of us drove to Montreal in February, which also ended up in a whiteout. It turned out later that the reason the car took a 1/4 mile to stop was that it had once more cracked a brake drum, a fact that I would not discover for some time.
The Gray Lady went to her greater reward last year after developing a new, non-brakes related issue, which was that she occasionally became _tired_ of driving in the winter, and therefore would simply shut off, at highway speeds, rendering her power steering and power everything else inaccessible. After having had this happen in heavy traffic to Lake Huron, I sent her off to the Kidney Foundation for a tax receipt worth less than my current bicycle, in honour of the antique idea that the kidneys are the source of unrelenting but somewhat stupid bravery.
Since then I have learned to check the weather, rent a car, always have candles and boots even when going somewhere warm, and maybe get different friends.
Hahaha, Oh, dear Mallory. You foolish warm-weathered creature. I come from Marquette, MI. It looks like this in the winter: http://i.usatoday.net/weather/_photos/2007/04/05/snow-marquettex-large.jpg
Once, in the height of my driving hubris I tried to drive downstate during a blizzard. The snow fell so fast that it took me two hours to make it 40 miles, and when I stopped in the next town over to ride it out my car got horribly stuck and two strapping young Russian man appeared from the ether and pushed my car out and then disappeared again and I am to this day not entirely sure they weren’t ghosts or perhaps shape-shifted black bears coming to my rescue.
I will now spend the rest of the day mentally composing dreamy paranormal fanfic about strapping young Russian shape-shifted black bears whose sole mission in life is to rescue beautiful young Michiganders and then maybe spend a delightful night of passion with them, or something. Half my family is from Alma, so I can pretend this applies to me too even though I live in New Mexico and it’s my fanfic.
Okay, I am absolutely terrified of snow, but the possibility of coming across strapping young Russian men who perform feats of strength for strangers in peril just might make it worth it.
My ex and I drove from Las Vegas to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, except we never made it there. We got so very very lost (this was in the 90s, before Google maps, before GPS – HOW DID WE EVEN LIVE) on a long dirt road. There were literally buzzards following the car – a rental Mitsubishi that did not survive this trip. We blew three tires and punctured the oil pan trying to find first pavement and then another human who could tell us where to point the car. We were rescued by a rancher whose first question was, “Are you vegetarians?”
We lied vigorously, because at the time we actually were.
Ahh! I drove a teeny tiny rental to Toroweap and back on a 4WD-only road. 122 miles round trip in 8 hours. The car should not have survived, but somehow it did. I’m so glad someone found you!
My high school boyfriend was driving me home one dark and cold night in eastern Idaho when he hit a patch of ice and felt his car start to skid. We were probably going ~45 mph down a four-lane highway. Rather than steer into the skid and just try to keep the car going straight, he yanked his wheel to the right and we spun 180 degrees across the opposite two lanes, coming to rest about 4 feet away from a tall snowbank. Thank goodness it was late at night and there was no traffic on that road, because otherwise we probably would have died.
I shrieked at him, asking what on EARTH he was thinking. He said that his dad had always told him that spinning a cookie was the right way to control a skid, which I’m pretty sure was a straight-up lie to cover his embarrassment because his dad was not an idiot. I still get mad when I think about it! Needless to say, that relationship did not succeed.
I have many stories that I could tell, but I’ll limit it to these two:
1) Drove from Detroit to Boston with my brother’s girlfriend without stopping (it’s about a 12 hour drive) to move said brother back to Detroit. We left at 10 o’clock at night, to beat a snow storm. I got food poisoning along the way, and spent the whole of the Mass Turnpike pulling into rest stops to throw up. The storm hit in Boston, and we had to drive through 2 feet of snow all the way back to Michigan.
2) One Christmas I was driving from the Detroit area to Up North (about 3 hours north) to visit my family. I left work early because there was a snow storm coming, but I still got caught in it. My drive took about 5 hours. I had to follow the tracks of the car in front of me to stay on the road. The only good thing about that trip was the beer my dad gave me when I made it home safely.
Sadly, I think vomit would only improve the rest stops on the Mass Pike.
Ah! So happy to be living in car-less territory (aka NYC)! While moving from Boston to Colorado with my boyfriend, our east coast selves were oblivious to HOW TERRIFYING a mid-western summer storm can be. After an hour of panicking, yelling and hyperventilating while obscene hail poured down and flash floods almost washed us away in rural Iowa/Minnesota, we finally got to the nearby Amish town, only to be surpassed by a horse and buggy.
My mom drove me up to visit Oberlin in January, when there are no students (literally, they send them all away for the whole month because it’s so miserable) and the world is drowned in snow. On the way, our van’s headlights frosted over (unbeknownst to us), and we were almost driven straight into a concrete divider by an eighteen-wheeler that couldn’t see us. We made it without crashing at all, but: super scary!
I didn’t know headlights COULD frost over. One more fun fact to cause me night terrors, yay!
I cannot drive and this is why (also I do not think we get weather in England. Not really.)
i was really hoping Brenda would be here, waving from the comments section, but there is still time!
i learned to winter-drive in nova scotia, where weather is rather unpredictable. you’re not going far, the trip should take 45 minutes, but if you have to go “over the mountain” (not a mountain) to get there, you’d better check the radar before you leave, since it may be in white-out conditions on an otherwise clear day. and there’s the cobequid pass (http://tinyurl.com/kpehfur) which is a whole other story (thankfully, that one i didn’t experience personally).
I (finally) signed up for a commenting to account to say: FJKDLAJ what the whaaaat Cobequid Pass. how do you even. totally illogical.
My worst driving experience was probably driving into Stewart, BC, in the middle of the winter. The roads were so so slick, and you go through this deep, narrow canyon with a canyon wall on one side and the right at the road edge on the other. The road is twisty as hell and the spray from the river coats the road in ice. There, of course, isn’t any cell service there, and my satellite phone wouldn’t even work. Nor is there anyone else on the road. After you get out of the canyon, you pass through 30 minutes of some of the most active avalanche areas in Canada. I got in fine, but by the time my coworker got there an hour later, an avalanche had wiped out part of the highway right after I passed through.
AH I spent some years in Stewart when I was little! We used to jump off the roof into snowbanks!
When I was in… I think it was tenth grade, my family decided to do a winter road trip from our SoCal home to Colorado, for skiing. (Well, my dad & brother would ski. My mom & I would sit by the fire and read, because I hate heights and she nearly died skiing when she was 13 and decided that was enough.)
Anyway, we packed our Civic so full that my brother and I couldn’t put our feet all the way down and kept trying to rest them on the headrests of the seat in front of us. Our parents didn’t appreciate this, but we didn’t appreciate being squashed, so.
Despite having grown up on the east coast and therefore understanding that snow exists, my dad decided we didn’t *really* need the snow chains on the car. I tried to sleep through the horror that followed, but my mom kept waking me up because I was “missing all the scenery”. It culminated in our finally pulling into the parking lot, turning around too fast and spinning completely out of control. (For some reason my dad pretended he had done this on purpose.)
On the way home, there was a terrible storm as we were passing through Idaho. After barely moving for hours, we realized were weren’t going to make it home that night, so we tried to find a place to stay. Of course, other people had the same idea so it took a while. We finally found a vacancy, and my dad went in to get a room… and then came back out, saying only “We’re not staying there.” But the hotel manager told dad about a church where they were letting storm-caught travelers stay. I was still in the phase of my coming out process where I felt I would burst into flames if I entered a church, so I was a little nervous. It was fine, though the mats were thin.
In the morning my dad finally decided to put on the snow chains and we went home.
When I was in graduate school, my stepdad very kindly agreed to give me his spare vehicle (a ’99 Buick Regal). So I flew from Boston (where I lived) to Maryland (where my parents live), arriving just ahead of the 2010 SNOWMAGEDDON. (This was before all snow-related storms started being named so fancifully and was therefore still hilarious and not played out as it is now.)
It snowed from Friday afternoon into Saturday night, dumping nearly two feet of snow onto parts of Maryland, where people looked at each other and shrugged as their plows, unused to anything more than the occasional four inches or so, crumbled into dust mid-plowing.
Fortunately, Sunday dawned bright and warm, and the snow started melting almost immediately. My stepdad, a born and bred Marylander, was aghast that I still intended to drive home that afternoon. I had class the next day, I argued, and couldn’t stay. Unconvinced by my New Englander bravado, he nonetheless reluctantly let me go, and I traveled via what might best be described as car-ice-skating from Bowie to Baltimore. I still made it home in less than 8 hours, which is pretty remarkable.
My parents (from Kansas, in a van with snowtires) were visiting me in DC during Snowmageddon, and we had the best time. Turns out no one else sees two feet of snow and says, “Let’s go to the Lincoln Memorial!” Since my parents distrust cities and crowds, being the only ones on the mall was pretty much perfect.
Ah, Snowmageddon! The reason we got over a week off of school during my senior year. Good times, except of course I was the one who had to shovel our sidewalk and the path to our cars, so I was also sore for that week.
Now that I go to college in Boston, I’m still bitter that the first time there was enough snow here for a snow day in who knows how many years, I was in Denmark.
My dad tore several ligaments in his knee while we were in the Sierras on a ski trip. His wife had to drive our truck home in 4-wheel drive and the poor gal was so game but so nervous* because in California, even if it’s snowing, other drivers do not slow down. “WHY BOTHER? It’s California, there’s no weather here!!!”
We drove about 10 mph until we got to about 2000ft elevation and you could actually see lane markers.
*When we left the medical area of the ski lodge, she said out loud, “How can I turn this thing around?” To which my cousin replied, “Gee, what’s this ‘R’ for on my car? Oh, I know; BACK’ARDS! R means BACK’ARDS!” We laughed, she sort-of laughed. We survived. My dad’s knee sort of survived, too.
Snow should be illegal.
I heartily concur.
At least on roads and vehicles. Let it sit prettily on the grass, but NO ROADS. Or sidewalks.
Oh man, I always forget that queso isn’t a thing outside of Texas. But cheese soup? Come on! Despite the level of devotion it inspires I have never in my life seen anyone just go at it with a spoon.
Also yes, weather here is insane. One week ago I was wearing shorts, a tank top, and flip flops while gardening in my front yard. Now it’s a cold, wet, miserable hellscape.
I’m in Kentucky, and queso is (mercifully) a thing here. It is amazing.
Wow, driving in the US sounds scary. My ‘OMG broke down on a busy roundabout’ moment sounds very tame by comparison ;).
Breakdown stories can be exciting! Once on I-80 in New Jersey, some debris flew off a truck ahead of me and it was rush hour so I couldn’t swerve to miss it. Ran over it, blew a tire, and pulled off on the wrong side of the road. Highway patrol came along and stopped six lanes of rush hour traffic so I could limp my vehicle over to the other berm where a tow truck could get to it. I have never been more embarrassed before or since!
But I’m used to driving massive distances in the US. When I moved to the UK for grad school I rented a car at Gatwick, packed in all of my possessions, and, sleep-deprived and jet-lagged, headed to Norwich. About an hour outside of London, the car broke down on a roundabout.
Terrifying.
Turned out, it was a new car, and the manufacturer HADN’T PUT OIL IN IT so once it burned through whatever oil was just in the engine to start with, the whole thing seized up and gave out.
It was a fairly isolated roundabout, and I managed to get onto a verge and sat there, shaking, confused, uncertain (this was pre-cell phones) until a nice gentleman I shall hereafter call “Brenda” approached and offered to send help from the next town.
My only scary driving story happened on a completely routine drive to work. Some tanker sprayed it’s contents onto my windshield and it refused to wipe off and completely blocked my windshield with a white film. I felt that seeing where I was going on DC’s beltway was rather important, so I decided to not just keep driving. I managed to pull over to the left shoulder without getting hit by the 18-wheeler that was behind me. He was not happy about it though. And then I tried to get the mystery substance off my car, in the middle of the beltway. Windshield wiper fluid didn’t really work, especially since my blades were all gummed up with the substance. I did eventually clear it off enough to drive to work, but I still get freaked out when driving past those tanker trucks.
OK, just reading this gave me heart palpitations. Just, breezily, “Oh, I slid of the road a couple times, got stuck in a ditch, it’s ok”. I would be dead. I would be absolutely dead from anxiety, whoever found me would have to peel my white-knuckled, clawed hands off the steering wheel to get me out of the car. Driving in snow is my most hated thing, and I avoid it at all costs, which is quite inconvenient, living in Ohio as I do. I can’t even choose a worst driving story. They’re all bad if they involve snow or ice!
Also, I have an uncanny talent for getting lost. My top moments:
-I was driving to a job interview- a college work-study job. This was shortly after I got my license. I didn’t know the area and I’d never driven on the freeway alone before. I didn’t get over far enough to the left because there was a truck and I was scared, so I ended up forced off the freeway to a series of bizarre and endless side streets in San Bernardino. LA is basically set up like a grid, and you can usually get back to where you started by turning in a square. San Bernardino (at least this part) is… not. I was three hours late to the interview. They hired me anyway.
-I was driving home from a different job interview, in Simi Valley, and took the freeway going west instead of east. The impressive thing, however, is that I *kept going* for almost an hour, hoping I’d see something familiar. Then I saw a sign for Santa Barbara and figured I was out of my depth. This being before smartphones, I had to call my mom to direct me back.
-I was two hours late to my ex-girlfriend’s party, despite having gone to her house countless times in high school. I foolishly thought I didn’t need directions, and tried to retrace the route I’d taken before. The problem was in high school I’d lived east of her, but now I lived west. So I took a left when I should have taken a right, and after going in circles for a bit, had to call and admit I had no idea how to get to her. She was mystified at where I ended up.
And then last month I was driving from Santa Monica to the valley, and somehow ended up by the ocean. Not sure how that happened.
The part of my Dad that is in my head is yelling, “Why didn’t you have a map in your car??”
The first time I did have a map! I just… took a while to pull over and consult it. Second and third times I have no excuse.
The very first time I ever drove, with my father explaining to me what to do, I could not understand how to turn where I was supposed to, and ended up driving into a ditch and we had to go to the nice farmer down the road to get him to pull the minivan out with a tractor.
That’s been the worst of it, and I know I am so super lucky, it’s not even funny.
I’m a terrible person but this is what I’m imagining! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXzjKb8nTw
Unrelated– queso is the devil. Mallory I am agast.
It’s delicious melted cheese that gets poured over other delicious things – what on EARTH is evil about that???
Queso is an UNNATURAL mexican food topping when there are delightful options like fresh salsa/ avocado/ cilantro /Cojita cheese (which is correctly cited in the piece as the proper cheese for tacos/life).
Well, obviously it doesn’t belong on “real” Mexican food but it is absolutely a tasty food substance and goes perfectly well with Tex-Mex and similar.
Fair. Maybe my response is premature as I’ve only had queso from a Quedoba chain in downtown DC that gave me food poisoning.
Well, then, you can’t be said to have had queso at all.
wrong
ugh I think this went to spam, trying again!
Despite growing up in Minnesota, I do not have many scary driving stories. This is possibly because the fleets of giant snow plows and sand trucks run 24/7/365 (Minnesota does not experience summer, generally speaking, which is mostly why I moved away).
However, I once drove home with a friend on Christmas Eve in a blizzard. Not quite as bad as this article, but we observed cars in the ditch at regular intervals along I-35 and saw semis stopped on the shoulder (“You know it’s bad if the semis pull over,” my friend observed darkly). Visibility was limited to about thirty or forty feet. We were forced to crawl along at 45 mph rather than the 75+ that is my normal Iowa velocity (and which I consider necessary if one is to pass through Iowa before succumbing to cornfield hypnosis). Cars appeared in front of us from nowhere; I veered rapidly into the other lane as my friend clutched her seat and very loudly did not suggest that maybe we should reduce our speed. We pulled over only once: I believe it was the Boondocks Motel and Cafe–a lovely getaway which I highly recommend should you ever find yourself in Iowa, Mallory–where I bought a tepid slice of pizza and immediately got back in the car because gdi we were GOING TO BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS. Endless hours later, I nearly fishtailed off our exit ramp because I was so happy to be back in Minnesota. I dropped my friend off, nearly got stuck in the snow, and had to drive round the block to build up speed and slingshot out of her neighborhood. NASA uses roughly the same principle, but they are probably dealing with less precipitation.
I think my family had to peel my hands off the steering wheel. My return trip a few days later featured much better weather. I hope yours does too!
At age 18 I drove myself and a co-feminist from south Florida to Massachusetts in order to attend a conference about abortion rights over the weekend. It took around 30 hours each way. We only missed one day of school. I did not sleep very much! Also there was a very bad thunderstorm on the Jersey Turnpike, but I think the actual scary part is “18-year-old driving 60 hours in a weekend on no sleep.” I rationalized it to myself at the time because it was all For The Cause. (For the record, it was an excellent conference.)
I am in my 30s now. Please don’t tell my parents, they still don’t know.
Speaking as a Bay Area native who has made many road trips to northern NM when her father lived there, BE CAREFUL MALLORY. The weather in the southwest, especially in the late fall, is a goddamn mystery. Things are intense and changeable in the summer as well but the snow/ice/death situation is a whole ‘nother struggle.
I recall one year we were driving to my dad’s for Thanksgiving and there was a freak snow-storm on I-60 that we missed by about 15 minutes. I say “missed” because it was not snowing when we drove through this 3-mile-stretch of north-eastern AZ but there was a fresh, deep layer of snow on the road (it started and stopped VERY abruptly so it was freakishly localized) and there were cars and semi-trucks scattered in various states of decrepitude all over the highway. There was a jack-knifed semi, another one overturned, the dozen or so vehicles that tried to avoid the trucks and failed themselves into various ditches and rocks (like there was literally a car that had nosedived onto a rock at such an impossible angle that it resembled a Dali painting), and a couple emergency vehicles that were arriving on the scene. It was like driving through the aftermath of some frost monster attack. Surreal. As one is wont to do when driving in a sparsely populated desert, we availed ourselves of the nearest gas station and ended up chatting with other drivers about the confusion. We gave drivers heading west a heads up (like I said, the snow was limited to a small radius) and felt that weird rest stop camaraderie.
I have lots of other NM stories, beautiful weird place that it is. My dad, who lived in Taos for several years, now refers to it as the Land of Entrapment.
Also, realizing that I said I-60. I meant I-40. It’s been a few years. Doesn’t change the surreality of the seeming ice elemental attack that we stumbled into. XD
Driving from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Winnipeg, Manitoba (where I live) is usually almost exactly two hours. Two friends and I were coming home from a shopping trip. It was a bright, sunny afternoon so we had no concerns about weather problems. It was, however, exceptionally windy, and the highway is wide open for the whole way. As we started home, we couldn’t help notice a number of cars had slid off the road into the ditch; as it turned out, the wind had been blowing snow across the highway all day, and the surface of the road had basically been polished into an icy skating rink. I reduced my speed to about half the speed limit. Quite a few drivers were less concerned about the road conditions and zoomed past us. At one point this happened with a blue half ton pickup. Then, in what felt like slow motion, we watched the truck start to fishtail across the highway in front of us. It skidded back and forth as the driver tried to gain control and failed. It hit the ditch, rolled over on its roof, back to upright, and came to rest upside down. I pulled over and my friends and I waded through the snow to the truck. I was quite nervous, and wondering if I was about to see a dead person. Just then the truck window rolled down (which at the moment was up) and an upside down smiling face greeted us. The driver was somehow fine, although he had unfortunately spilled a red colored drink all over himself during the crash, so it took a minute to figure that out. Some local folks showed up that could help him so we continued on our way. My friend cried for most of the ride and we almost ended up in the ditch once, but 4 hours later we finally made it home.
This past winter, a friend flew into one of the ski towns in Colorado, and the weather looked okay, so my husband and I made a day of going up there, snowshoeing, meeting her for dinner and coming back.
Well, the weather was NOT okay, and a giant snowstorm blew up and overtook us out of town. There was like 10 feet of visibility, ice on the roads and — because it was a weekend in the Colorado mountains — there was still a ton of traffic. I kept thinking that it would get better as we dropped elevation, but the storm was more or less tracking along with us. The windshield iced up so that there was a shoebox-sized hole out of which to see. And of course I was very pregnant so I was sure we’d all die and become one of those tragic “promising young family wiped out” tales. We pulled off at an exit to de-ice and heard the next day that there was a fatal accident right in that spot a couple hours later.
I was very grateful for my husband’s Montana-bred driving skills that day.
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.
No, no, that’s wrong. That’s very wrong. What I did was rented a white Ford Focus hatchback, which I will have you know right now is a Very Small Car, and then proceeded to drive from Chicago to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which is notionally very easy.
However, just for “funzies”, I decided to leave on the night of a blizzard so large it was ultimately granted its own Wikipedia article. The first flurries started to fall as I sat in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway, and it was snowing pretty hard when I stopped for dinner at the Fazoli’s in Pleasant Prairie. I drove around Milwaukee on the bypass, which was remarkably empty of cars. It was almost serene.
Thereafter, the trip became a nightmare of darkness and terror and swirling snow. I averaged 35 miles per hour by following in the fresh tire tracks of a blue minivan. Any time I experimented with passing said minivan, or increasing my speed, physics intervened in a knuckle-whitening manner. (Did I mention the car was very small?)
Somewhere around Fond du Lac, I got behind a salt truck, paint job be damned, and finally made it to Oshkosh only about two hours later than expected, protesting that it was easy and fun and that I was hardly scared at all, and would you please ignore the stain on my pants. I was shown Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece The Room as compensation for my trouble. Or perhaps as punishment. I’m still not sure.
1. This is delightful
2. Points off for not linking to relevant wikipedia article.
I wasn’t sure you could use HTML in comments – this is the relevant article. Thank you for saying it was delightful! I would’ve tried to write it a little better, but the phone on my desk keeps ringing and they insist I answer it.
” At least 16 people died as a result of the storm, and thousands were without power.”
Jesus Christ.
(This was back in the dark ages where they gave disarmingly whimsical names to winter storms, clearly.)
Winter Storm Draco
Winter Storm Katniss
Winter Storm “The Fuck You Think You’re Doing?”
I meant to say before they gave disarmingly whimsical names to storms, but you get my drift.
Draco my ass.
Driving through an ice storm in the Canadian Rockeis, in the (33ft) RV, towing a (20ft) trailer with about $200,000 of racecar and tools in it. That was FUCKING SCARY.
I don’t have any particularly good road-accident stories (only boring ones), but I have a favorite of my boyfriend’s.
Mike was riding shotgun as his friend Jerod drove them to Sacramento. They ended up getting hit in the rear and spun out. As they were spinning out, Jerod’s only thought was, “Oh my god, I’ve killed Michael!” while Mike’s only thought was, “Oh my god, my laptop!”
Actually, that’s not true. I’m a big liar. Once my brother and I got stuck in the Mexican side of Nogales for three days because we were driving to visit my dad for Christmas (who lives several hours south of the border in Guaymas), because Matt drove over a divider while trying to stop at the border crossing so that we could show our passports, and the car got all fucked up. The tow truck took us through Nogales to the VW dealership on the Mexican side, and we proceeded to hang out there for eight hours each day until the car was pronounced ready to drive. My brother and I were both shit at Spanish, but fortunately the customer service rep who was available spoke better English than we deserved and was very kind in arranging a hotel room for us. We managed to call home at least once to let our mom know we hadn’t died, and we lived off of Bimbo products from the VW vending machine. We finally got back on the road, and about an hour from Guaymas a big rock bounced off the road and cracked the windshield on the passenger side. All we could do was laugh. (The crack’s still there, years later, because my brother was cheap, and then I got the car, and I’m also cheap and it doesn’t seem to threaten the windshield’s structural integrity.)
this isn’t necessarily my best terrifying-driving-story but the other day while I was driving on the highway I preemptively changed lanes because I saw some kind of slowdown/commotion up ahead of me. turned out there was a FULL-SIZED LADDER lying in the road, & the Nissan XTerra in front of me ended up running directly over it because (I assume) they were going too fast to stop or avoid it. they kept driving for a few miles after that too, before pulling over, which blew my mind–even if I felt 100% confident my car was fine, there’s no way I’m calm enough to drive after RUNNING OVER A GIANT METAL LADDER.
PS, this is me, but I temporarily forgot my IntenseDebate details & decided to be lazy. except then I successfully logged in for a follow-up post, & now feel compelled to draft this over-explanation to avoid the very unlikely possibility of someone thinking there’s an impostor who’s SWFing my username.
Sooo, we’re all lucky to be alive then? Good, good, let’s keep it that way.
I live in a big city and I haven’t had a car in over a decade, so I feel like my crazy road trip days are kind of behind me. But being in an urban area doesn’t make you immune to this-car-may-be-my-coffin-yet stories. For example, I had several friends who got trapped in the 2011 snowstorm that turned Lake Shore Drive in Chicago into a Day After Tomorrow dystopian hellscape:
I *just* missed being stuck in that due to the insistence of my good friend/carpool buddy that “HEY MAYBE WE SHOULD LEAVE WORK EVEN EARLIER THAN WE ORIGINALLY PLANNED C’MON C’M’ON LET’S GO.” it still took forever to get home but at least we got there.
…& then our power went out. & then dudevolleyball & I decided “hey, how often does one have the chance to experience a blizzard firsthand?”& bundled up to go outside. there was a Toyota Prius basically buried in a snowdrift that had blown in off the lake (I lived on the first street west of Lake Shore Drive, & this was on one of the streets perpendicular); there was a snow shovel tossed aside nearby in a clearly “fuck this; I’ll deal with it later” gesture.
I was made to go to work the next day – our boss told us to make sure we had arrangements, “call a cab if necessary”. I took the ‘L’ and was fine except that the entire rest of the world stayed home. My coworkers and I got an extra day’s pay for our troubles, which I guess is nice, but I think I would’ve preferred cocoa and a novel… or the chance to go out and take pictures.
I used to live in fucking Ottawa and that is horrifying.
That is some fuckin’ hard core drifting.
I didn’t even know Texas/New Mexico typically even got snowstorms so uh yeah.
Haha, neither did I!
NEITHER DID I
My roommate and I once drove from Tahoe to Santa Barbara through a massive winter storm hitting the entire Pacific Coast because we wanted to get laid.
There was a blizzard in Tahoe, but I had chains on my four wheel drive vehicle and we drove super slow. We kept having to stop and scrape the ice off of the windshield wipers and saw many, many vehicles that had driven off the road.. It took over 5 hours to travel 133 miles. Once we got out of the mountains, we drove in varying levels of rain for the rest of the journey. There was a monsoon in San Luis Obispo. It’s the only time I’ve had to come to a complete stop on the freeway due to weather. It was worse than in the blizzard.
We did finally make it to Santa Barbara, and it was worth it.
I came out of a job interview to find my car had a flat tire. I had another job interview that afternoon. No time to look for someone to help me. I was wearing a coffee-with-cream silk suit with a pencil skirt and pumps. But I changed that flat by myself and never got a speck on me. Me – who cannot feed myself saltines without somehow staining my blouse. Luck was with me that day. And the fact that an old VW Bug makes changing a flat a little less difficult than most cars.
Kindness finds me sometimes. I was very young, driving home alone in the middle of the night after my grandmother’s funeral. I had to teach class the next morning. My car died in the middle of nowhere in the Texas panhandle. This was before cell phones. A trucker pulled over and walked back to my car. I refused to unlock the door and spoke to him through a half-inch of my window. I asked him to just get back in his truck and call the cops. 10 minutes later another trucker pulled over and walked back to my car. Again I refused to unlock. He said he heard the call go out on the radio about me and knew I was scared. He told me to look at his truck. There was his wife standing next to it, waving at me, in case she could make me feel safer. I let the man look under my hood and he said I blew my water pump. He rigged it up temporarily and said I should drive to the next town with him following me to make sure I got there. He directed me to the first gas station we got to and told me the town mechanic (yeah, only one mechanic in the whole town) had responded to his call on the CB radio and was on his way there to change my pump. Trucker waited with me, then handed me off to the mechanic, who fixed me up and charged me very little after getting out of bed in the middle of the night. I now know he charged me less than the pump should have cost because he wanted to help a frightened public school teacher, alone in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, who just lost her grandmother. I have never failed to help a trucker since then.
This made me tear up a little.
(Also, I used to have a car that ate water pumps like candy, so I feel that pain.)
Oh god this was so funny, and yet at the same time so anxiety laden because I know so well the hell-pit that is Portales. If you see my dead-beat ex, please allow him to be the first to fall in your glorious reaping!
Good luck and please, please be careful making your way back to the true land of enchantment.
I think Mr Hunting Creek and I have been in your ditch in NM, but Brenda was just a child at the time so he pushed while I steered because he’s a gentleman. We weren’t having much success until a guy in a truck stopped, hooked the car to a winch and pulled us out. We tried to thank him or pay him, but he said he saw our California plates and UC Berkeley decal and said these people will never get out of this ditch unless I stop.
A friend and I drove from Worland, WY to Glendive, MT. In the winter. We are both seasoned winter drivers, but we were still dumber than a stump because we forgot to factor in the Hysham Hills. It does not matter that Billings to Glendive is a straight shot on the interstate, these hills are treacherous. Especially in the middle of a whiteout. We made it through the whiteout. It was the trip back that did us in. We hit black ice and that was it. We spun out and screwed up the alignment on her car and had to sit in, I think, Forsyth for HOURS before they were able to fix it. Just so you know, she was driving there for a booty call with a very hot geologist from Canada.
Like ten years ago, my husband (we were just dating then) decided to drive from the north suburbs of Chicago down to Dallas-Fort Worth in January to visit a friend of ours who’d moved there. My husband thought we could do it in one go, I gave him the stink eye and convinced him to plan an overnight stay someplace. He found a nice hotel, I packed lingerie, and promptly got my period. THANKS UTERUS. Anyway, he took time off of work, we planned to leave early in the morning, then eh was informed that LOL WHOOPS he had a MANDATORY meeting he HAD to attend even though he had already started his vacation time, so we lost literally like 12 hours of driving time, eventually leaving after it had been snowing for several hours.
On the trip down, we hit some black ice on the road but were ok. And then another car hit the same broad patch of ice and my husband had to take evasive action to keep us from getting hit. The other car was entirely out of control, just skating across the multi-lane highway, other cars trying to slide out of its way. We wound up spinning in a full circle and coming to rest in a ditch, but we were unhurt and somehow, luckily, no cars hit any other cars.
About an hour away from our destination there was a huge crash that didn’t affect us in any way except to keep us at a complete standstill for literally 2 or 3 hours (I forget how long) in a place where neither of us had cell phone signal at all. We were on a divided highway and some SUVs tried to leave our road and cross the severely sloping rough terrain to the other road so they could just turn around. They all got stuck.
The drive back was uneventful.
Oh no, this post is VERY UPSETTING to me because next week I’m moving from Portland to Houston by car! When I did this move in the opposite direction, 4 years ago, it was around Christmastime and the only ice we encountered was in the mountains in southern Oregon — I’m hoping for similarly good weather this time.
Things I’m Scared Of About This Trip:
1. Ice
2. My mom is flying up to be my Driving Buddy. We get along really well, but I’m not sure we get along “4 days in a car together” well.
3. THE CAT, OH GOD THE CAT, HOW DO I ROAD-TRIP WITH THE CAT.
Sedatives. For the cat, you, your mom- whatever it takes.
Also, since I just did Seattle to Austin in October- you’re going the California route, right? Not cutting through Utah? Or any of the other delightful intervening states with mountain passes?
Look, just get to I-10, the rest is easy. I used to drive from Houston to Santa Cruz a few times a year, and as long as I stuck to the 5 & I-10, there weren’t problems. All that deceptive ‘hypotenuse of the triangle’ stuff is a load of crap, because the hypotenuse goes through mountains and snow and mountains and more snow. And ice. So as long as you can get through that pass from OR to CA okay, you’ll be fine. Bored as all hell, especially between El Paso & San Antonio, but fine.
Do you have audiobooks? Hey, Middlemarch is a nice long book, listen to that.
Sedate the cat.
And even though Houston is ridiculously cold for Houston at the moment (48*? Wha?) it should be lovely and sunny and cool when you get here, and on behalf of the entire city, I welcome you with open arms and also some tacos.
I do have some audiobooks set aside! Or, I did. Then I had a conversation with my husband that went something like:
Me: “Hey hon, those audiobooks I pulled out for the drive — I put them on this shelf, right? Do you know where they went?”
Husband: *looks guiltily at stack of packed boxes*
Me: “… I take it I won’t be listening to The Hobbit on the way.”
(This is probably for the best, because my mom would have hated having to listen to The Hobbit with me. Good idea, though, I may hit the bookstore before we go and try to pick out something we’ll both like.)
Oh my God, never mind tacos, welcome me with some of Mallory’s “cheese soup” and we’re good. There is nothing I miss more than queso.
“Cheese soup” = bliss. Why do people not understand this basic fact?
Hey, I’ve seen audible free trials advertised here – get one of those and download, well, maybe not The Hobbit because you’re trying to survive the trip with an intact relationship (I presume), but something.
As you’re taking I-10 through Tucson, get off at St. Mary’s, turn right, drive a couple of blocks to St. Mary’s Tortillaria and buy 12 dozen flour tortillas and as many green corn tamales as they will let you have. Do this in my name.
So, the one I will never let my mother live down is the time that, while I still had my LEARNER’S PERMIT, she made me drive in the foothills in Colorado (HWY 285, for those who care) when it was super icy and I fishtailed just turning on to the highway and then she made me drive the winding, narrow, guardrail-free road to my friend’s house. We lived, though. And I learned about downshifting.
Driving from Austin to Seattle had two exciting events- the deer that wanted to die on the highway in Wyoming in the dark (I had been driving along just waiting for one to pop out, so I stopped about 100 yards away, but I was right, darn it), and the part where we were just hours away from Seattle and broke a band on one of the tires while driving 65 and the nice police officer pulled over and pointed us towards the nearest tire store that we could limp the car into. Nothing of note happened while my husband was driving, of course. This is also the trip where the “always have a road atlas in the car” rule started after we lost GPS just outside of Roswell, were almost out of gas and didn’t know if we’d make it into town or run out of gas first.
Speaking of harrowing car experiences- you all have emergency kits in your car, right? Right? Not driving unknown roads in unknown weather conditions without even a warning triangle, surely? Or a tow strap? Tow straps are great for getting your car out of ditches.
So, since you ALL have emergency supplies in your car, what do you carry? I just bought a car and am in the process of stocking mine with: emergency triangles, tire gauge, jumper cables (6 ga, 16 feet), tow strap, plastic poncho, multitool, vice grips, duct tape, first aid kit, shop towels, flashlight, granola bars, bottled water, and, new additions: neon safety vest and mylar blanket.
And, since it’s winter (although my zone is relatively snow-free, so no shovel) super warm winter gloves, hat, sensible shoes, warm socks, ice scraper, and backup jacket. If I were living in my native climate (or driving across the country in the snow, hint, hint), I’d add a shovel, a ratty warm blanket or sleeping bag and something for traction- probably those spiffy metal mats, but at least kitty litter or some carpet scraps.
1. What is a warning triangle
2. What is a tow strap
3. Nothing bad ever happens in california
1) A warning triangle is basically a substitute for flares (that won’t accidentally set your car on fire). It’s a big orange reflective triangle that you set up behind your car if you break down so people don’t hit you if you, say, have a flat on the highway. They usually fold for storage. Since people in my neck of the woods usually treat my car as though it is invisible when driving, I figure I need all the visibility I can get if I break down.
2) A tow strap is a strap with hooks on either end that hook to specific parts of your car frame and another car/ truck so that lovely people like Brenda can haul you out of a ditch using their vehicle instead of their muscles. You can also get tow chains but they are heavier and not really necessary unless you drive something really heavy. Handy if you and half the city is in a ditch during a winter storm waiting for a tow truck and someone drives by with a four wheel drive truck- they can get you out and you won’t have to wait 5 hours for AAA.
3) You must have better luck with cars than I do….
The only accident I’ve ever been in:
Coming back to college after Thanksgiving between Utah to Idaho, in my friend’s 1968 Bronco with three other people. I was the front passenger. Said Bronco did not have seatbelts in the backseat for the back two passengers and only lapbelts for the front seats. It was blizzarding, and a few hours before we came through, there had been a 30 car pile-up along the same stretch of highway. The set-up is this: a tour bus had run out of gas and was on the side of the road, a tow truck was stopped to fill it up, and was taking up part of the right lane with flares out. A small hatchback had come along, hit black ice trying to change lanes to avoid the tow truck, and ended up hitting the tow truck (they were incredibly lucky, the hatchback stopped literally inches before their windshield went through the bed of the tow truck, which would have sheered the roof off their car and probably killed the two in the front seat). We came along just a few minutes later, hit the same patch of ice trying to change lanes, going about 50mph. We first hit the tow truck, and knocked it completely off the road into the ditch on the right side of the highway, somehow the two guys from the tow truck who were standing in the road checking on the occupants of the hatchback managed to vault themselves out of the way in time (the hatchback folks hadn’t even had time to get out of the car yet we were so close behind them). Then the back end of our Bronco swung around and hit the hatchback, knocking it across the highway into the opposite ditch. The driver of my car literally bent the steering wheel in half as he was holding it so tight trying to turn our car out of the skid. My seat was on a steel plate which was bolted to the floor of the car, the impact knocked it loose so that half of the plate folded upwards and my seat hung at a 45 degree angle leaning towards the driver’s side. The guy and girl in the backseat had heard the commotion as we were sliding (apparently I was very calmly and insistently saying over and over Driver’s name, we’re sliding. We’re sliding, Driver’s name. Which I have no memory of.) and were jostling each other trying to see through the front windshield what was happening–the impact caused the girl’s face to slam into the back of the head of the guy who had gotten in front of her, it broke her nose and every blood vessel in both her eyes; her face was so swollen that the skin around her nose was the same height as the bridge of her nose. Amazingly, that was about the worst injury we had in either of the cars; especially remarkable when the 5 people in the hatchback had gotten hit twice.
Bookmarking this post, since I also live in Oakland and will also be traveling to a New Mexican wedding next year. Guess I better start looking for a cheapo flight now…
Thanks for the reminder that my Christmas drive from SAT to ABQ might not be done under median weather conditions. The guarantee of no winter weather ends in the hills west of SAT. At the very least, I’ll enhance my current survival kit of a Zippo lighter and some tinder…
My dad has the exact same attitude to highway closures as you! So I have ridden through a West Texas blizzard fearing death, only to be stopped by the actual humans blocking the road in Oklahoma and saved via a night in a no-electricity motel!
Also, driven across all of Wyoming in the middle of the night in a blizzard where I could only see the center line and the reflectors to know I was still on the road.
I’m glad you’re OK. And a little surprised Angel Brenda didn’t give you a pair of snowboots for getting home with.
If you don’t want to be more freaked by road trips, don’t read this. If you do, let me tell you the story of the Kansas man who went missing on September 2, 2013; appeared to have had a car crash on September 3; and then died while trapped in his car in a Utah ravine. He wasn’t found until October 18. While he was trapped and dying, he wrote goodbye letters to his family. *shivers*
(the full story is pretty Google-able, but I didn’t want to post the link and have the comment get trapped)
And now I’ve googled it and I have even more questions than before!
Because I was lucky and smart enough to go to the MeetUp, I have experienced the Mallory Hug. It is a Force To Be Reckoned With, on the same par as ice storms in New Mexico. And also Brenda. Brenda is awesome, and she is lucky.
And so are you. Please, oh please, never drive in an ice storm again.
As you're taking I-10 through Tucson, get off at St. Mary's, turn right, drive a couple of blocks to St. Mary's Tortillaria and buy 12 dozen flour tortillas and as many green corn tamales as they will let you have. Do this in my name.
One year when I lived in southern New Mexico it snowed in October. Half an inch. Everything was closed and everyone was off the road because snow in southern New Mexico is not acceptable. Different story in the north, of course, where the mountains are a bit more serious about their mountainousness.
One year when I lived in southern New Mexico it snowed in October. Half an inch. Everything was closed and everyone was off the road because snow in southern New Mexico is not acceptable. Different story in the north, of course, where the mountains are a bit more serious about their mountainousness.
I just read this to my husband over dinner and we died laughing.
My parents decided they would drive me to college in Boston from Maryland and race ahead of Hurricane Sandy.
Turns out, no one else is stupid enough to be on the roads during a hurricane, so we made it in record time–about 6 hours instead of the usual 10. My parents then decided that instead of waiting out the hurricane in Boston, they would drive right through the storm back down to Maryland the next day. They called that night to inform me that the drive was even nicer than on the way up.
As an actual driving horror story, now, on another trip between Boston and Maryland, my sister was driving and I was copiloting for her through a snowstorm when the car behind her went into a tailspin and took out the car next to it and behind it, and a third car swerved into the highway divider while trying to avoid it. The road was awfully clear for several miles after that – very few cars behind us or passing us.