Adventures in driving

Fun of driving at night

With the bitter cold yesterday, I wasn’t that concerned with the prediction of snow. I assumed that the snow would be too fine to worry about.

Boy, was I wrong. We got almost an inch of dry white powder. Slippery dry white powder. That melted and refroze under highway traffic and road treatment. So when I went out in the evening for our commute, I had to drive slowly and carefully, as road surfaces, which looked identical to the surfaces before and after, would suddenly turn slick, and I’d have a bit of a wobble. Nothing more than that, thankfully, but it made me wary.

I did, however, get to observe someone not get into an accident. There was a white pickup quite a bit before me. And on an overpass just before a large curve on the highway, it started fishtailing. Major fishtailing. It swerved into the median, but fortunately didn’t seem to hit the concrete wall, then continued to fishtail across three lanes (void of traffic, praise the Lord), and back again, I think a couple of times. I don’t know how long it lasted, but I do know that it lasted long enough for me to go, “Woah. Woah. Woah.” multiple times as I kept seeing it swerve in another direction. It didn’t do a 360, which might have been an improvement, but I’m pretty sure it was going down the highway sideways for a while.

Oddly enough, the pavement felt more secure to me at that point than it had most of the trip. I did stay well back.

I’m sure the driver had a massive adrenaline rush from that. I know I did, and I was just watching.

I was utterly exhausted after last night’s trip, just from having to drive so careful to avoid slips.

This morning’s trip was equally exhausting. Perhaps more so. The roads were less icy, but there was a huge amount of traffic, and other people were slipping and having accidents. All of them were established accidents by the time we got there, with the lanes closed, so the traffic backed up. Every time, there were worse backups going the other way. What is usually an hour drive was more like an hour and a half. And, of course, the back roads at either end were nowhere as clear as the highway.

But we made it.

When we got home this morning, I told my husband that I was going to lie in bed, eat my donut and hot chocolate (thank you QuikTrip for the coupon!), and watch a Remington Steele. So we both did. I was thinking that afterwards I’d come up and write, but I slept for a couple of hours instead, and didn’t get up to write until the afternoon.

At least I got something done.

Be careful out there, everyone.