On Saturday night, Jason and I did a little bit of painless Christmas shopping (without even trying, we are 75% done) and settled in at our favorite Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the UFC pay-per-view. When it was over we walked outside just in time to see a tall, lanky guy wearing a baseball cap fall on the sidewalk, his head making a sickeningly loud THUD! on the cement.
As the rest of his college-age buddies stood circled around him, guffawing loudly, another young guy came over and asked earnestly, “Dude, are you OK?”
Baseball Cap slowly sat up, rubbed the back of his head and said shakily, “Yeah.”
And simultaneously, everyone outside suddenly realized that this wasn’t a case of a drunk guy with no equilibrium.
It was raining out.
The temperature was colder than 32 degrees.
Ergo, the parking lot was covered with ice.
Immediately, everyone grabbed the nearest person/building column/landscaping bush for support. Jason and I held hands as we slid down the sloped sidewalk toward my car. All around us, you could hear people’s squawks of surprise as they took their first step outside, and the growling-screeching sounds of tires trying to grip the road.
I got in the driver’s seat and watched as Jason battled the thick crust of ice on the windshield with the scraper. And that’s when it really hit me: we were headed home, on a Saturday night, after midnight, on icy roads – surrounded by a bunch of other cars driven by people who had most likely been drinking. (My total drink intake? Four Cokes.)
Jason finally got in the car and said, “Just take it slow.” On the frontage road, I gave the car a little bit of gas just to see what I was dealing with, and the back wheels immediately fishtailed. Well, this is not going to be good, I thought. I decided against taking the freeway home and chose side streets instead, where it was OK to go slow.
At the first stoplight, I was in a double turning lane with a car next to me. When the light turned green, I could see the other car swinging toward me, so I took my lane extra wide and a little faster than I wanted, but I had a vision of being sideswiped by the other guy, so I took my chances. To be honest, I was 100% confident in my driving abilities (and thankful I wasn’t attempting this in the Cavalier), but I was positively frightened that I was going to be hit by someone else.
My chosen route home had about 10 stoplights and as we approached the first one, which was still green, Jason said, “If it turns yellow, keep going.” My thoughts exactly. The first 3-4 lights stayed green, and everything was fine; I was traveling around 15-20 mph and there were very few cars in my immediate vicinity. It was still raining, and the streetlights hitting the water on the windshield impeded my line of sight, so every once in awhile I had to relinquish my death grip on the steering wheel to hit the wipers.
The next few stoplights were red, but by the time I crawled up to them, they had already changed. I didn’t dare come to any kind of a complete stop because it was so icy I wasn’t sure I had the traction to get going again.
Suddenly, I noticed flashing red lights up ahead. “What’s that?” I asked Jason. “Is that someone in my lane with their hazards on?”
“I can’t tell,” he said. “I think so.”
I didn’t want to change lanes if I didn’t have to, but I did, fishtailing slightly. By the time we got closer, I saw it was a car that was still moving, which pissed me off. I know you’re supposed to put your flashers on if you’re moving more slowly than the rest of traffic, but seriously, we were ALL moving slowly. All that happened was that that car having its flashers on confused everyone and made them change lanes unnecessarily because they assumed it was someone who had stalled or hit the embankment.
My luck finally ran out with the green stoplights, and I had to come to a complete stop. When the light turned green, I slowly gave the car some gas and started into the intersection. When I was about 1/3 of the way through, a car came barreling out of nowhere across the intersection.
“Shit!” I screamed, trying not to slam on the brakes or swerve.
The guy didn’t even come close to hitting us, but I was completely unnerved because I hadn’t even SEEN him.
“It’s OK,” Jason said, as I fumed. That wasn’t some guy who tried to stop but couldn’t so he decided to keep going. That was a guy who made no effort whatsoever to slow down.
I forced myself to unclench my fists, sit up straight and take a few deep breaths. We were nearing the point where I’d have to get on the freeway for a short period so we could take our exit.
Cars were backed up on the freeway, and I could see red and blue cop lights on both sides of the divider. As I inched into my lane, I realized that being stopped was not good here because the road went uphill at this point and we had no traction.
“Just keep moving,” Jason ordered. “Don’t stop completely.”
As we inched along, we noticed how smashed up the cars were in the accidents. “How can that be?” Jason asked. “We’re hardly moving and if we hit anything the car wouldn’t look like that.” “That’s because people are total idiots,” I said, still totally expecting to get taken out by another car.
When we made it to our exit, it was partially blocked by a police car and a damaged truck. “Do you still want to take it?” Jason asked.
Actually, I did not. That particular exit ramp is always slippery, even during normal winter conditions, and the thought of trying it with nothing but a steep hill that would deliver me directly into two lanes of oncoming traffic if something happened made me decide not to chance it.
“Nope,” I said. “We’re going to the next exit.”
I took a few more deep breaths, forcing myself to calm down. The closer we got to home, the more convinced I was that something was going to happen. Traffic was heavier here because of the accidents and people were staying way too close to other vehicles. Right before we got to our exit, I realized I might’ve made a mistake.
“This ramp takes a super-tight curve and it’s all uphill,” Jason realized. “You cannot stop at ALL on this thing.”
I eased off the accelerator so I could create some space between me and the car in front of me. Then I went for it. I was walking that very fine line between accelerating and coasting uphill while turning the wheel as slowly as possible. And when we got the top, the light was green. A few blocks later, we were home.
And that’s when I finally allowed myself to exhale.
