I had a huge scare today. I got caught out in a blizzard.
We only got back from 10 days in Texas on Sunday night and I worked Monday through Wednesday. We'd been living off applesauce, crackers and peanut butter for 3 days, just waiting for Thursday to get here so I could get to the store. Unfortunately, there was a big winter storm coming today. I took a risk of beating the worst of it and headed out anyway once Huck went down for his nap. Remember, Stephen works from home. I wasn't just leaving the little fella and hoping for the best. Even so, it was a big mistake.
As I headed out of the driveway, the drifting was just beginning and it crossed my mind to turn around and bag it. But we needed food! And if we were about to get really socked in, we needed it even more! I made it to the store without much problem but as I was speeding up and down the aisles (with my new pre-made grocery list you'll see in the next post), they started announcing road closures over the PA!
As I picked through the avocados...
State Highway 26... CLOSED!
As I hit the organic freezer section...
State Highway 33... CLOSED!
As I waited for a price check on dried apricots...
Teton Pass... CLOSED!
Now none of these closures affect my drive home. They don't usually close county roads. Not officially anyway. There's no need, they just become impassable. But if they've decided the main roads are too bad and are just going to close them down and clean up the mess later, you can bet the plows aren't out in the boonies.
I called from the parking lot and pow-wowed with Stephen about the best route to try and then...I set out into the wilderness. I must get home with this Concord Grape Jelly or my family will die! And hey, there were lots of other people at the store and they were all heading home.
Well, apparently none of them live as far out as we do because once I made the turn west, I was the only person on the face of the freaking planet. I white-knuckled it for 15 miles through blinding, blowing snow in 2nd gear. I think it took me close to an hour.
The thing with blizzards is the snow goes up. It's not usually about the snow that's falling, it's about the snow the blowing from the ground and from the 6 foot snow banks that have been created by the plows on the sides of the roads. Not that any of that matters. What matters is YOU CAN'T SEE. There's no contrast--sky is white, road is white, field is white, snow banks are white. I made it home because most of the time I could catch a glimpse of contrast in the tire rut from the car that drove the road before. The car that probably made it home just before the worst of it hit. When I didn't have a rut I could barely make out, and if the wind had died down to 30mph for a sec, I could measure my road position off the shadow of the telephone poles.
By the time I reached my turn, the worst 1/4 mile of any trip to my house in bad weather, my hands were actually aching from gripping the steering wheel so hard. And it wasn't just fear that gave me the death grip. Mind you, I was scared shitless, but if you aren't holding the wheel pretty firmly to center, a tire rolling through too deep snow can yank you into the bank pretty fast.
I couldn't really make out the conditions on my road, but I did miraculously manage to hit the center of it when I turned. Too bad, not good enough. About 10 yards from the turn the car just stopped. Couldn't go forward. Couldn't go back. I tried to open the door to see how deep the snow was in front of me and if I had gone off the road or something and I got very bad news. The door only opened a crack, but it was enough to see that the snow was halfway up the car door. Gulp.
I think that's pretty much when my heart started beating fast and images from every blizzard episode of "Little House on the Prairie" flashed before my eyes. I called Stephen in a restrained panic. HELP ME! Not only is the car stuck in the middle of the road during a blizzard but I can't get out!
He actually told me that our other car, a Prius, couldn't make it. Don't tell me shit I already know! Who knows how much oxygen I have left! I'm not asking you to take a fucking hybrid out into a blizzard, moron! I'm asking you to call the cavalry! He actually had the nerve to tell me not to yell at him. I'll yell all I want! I'm scared I'm going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning from the tailpipe being plugged up with snow, or freeze to death when I turned off the motor so I didn't gas myself.
At this point he asked me to try and open the passenger side door.
That was a really good idea. Worked like a charm and I was quickly free of the deathtrap. However, 30 seconds outside in the needle sharp, blinding, stinging snow and I got back inside. I did however assess that I was a tad left of center on the road, only the driver's side was blocked...oh, and the the tailpipe wasn't clogged so I was unlikely to suffocate.
I wasn't as into his next brilliant suggestion: Bundle up as much as you can and start walking home.
Now it's only a quarter mile. From where I was stopped you can actually see my house on a normal day.
But the particular moment when he made this suggestion the wind was so strong that I couldn't look down the road without having my eyes seared and couldn't even see the outline of the telephone poles to navigate by.
Again with the flashbacks to "Little House on the Prairie" and "Young Pioneers." I was sure that if I went out there I'd fall down in a snowbank, get up disoriented, and walk off into a field never to be seen again, except for the mitten they'd find in the snow just before the commercial break....
I think that might be when I started to cry. I'm not a scaredy cat at all so I think that got his attention. Maybe it was the hour of hard driving I'd just done or the fact that I had a baby at home or the fact that last month a woman in our county froze to death huddled in a ditch out 20 feet from her car. She and her husband got stuck and he left her in the car to hike up the road to get their snow machine. When he got back she was gone--she just wandered off. People looked for hours, but didn't find her til morning. Frozen. Now she did have Alzheimer's, but still, the story was fresh in my brain.
That's when Stephen got all manly and said he was coming to get me. And he did.
About 30 minutes later, the wind had died down enough for me to make out his silhouette tromping through the snow with our dog. Another man was walking with them carrying a shovel and another was driving slowly behind them in a truck. It was the cavalry after all.
Turns out they were both neighbors with wives stuck out on the roads. One was stuck just behind me at the turn to our road and the other was stuck farther down the county road. Meanwhile, a farmer on a snowplow was shuttling home another couple from our neighborhood who got bogged down on another county road. In the end I wasn't the only idiot who tried to get home in that shit. That made me feel a lot better.
The guys started working on the car and the dog and I headed back up the road, on foot, to relieve the other neighbor who had come sit with Huck while Daddy came to rescue me. The wind had died down significantly and I felt much better having the dog with me. My panic had passed.
I didn't have much hope of him really being able to get the car home. The road got a little better just past where I was stuck but it was still horrible. I watched as snow machines went up and down the road a few more times, presumably bringing other people home who were stuck in the snow. But no cars passed. Nevertheless, about 45 minutes after I got home, the little Blue Subaru, turned into the driveway...
...and got stuck again. He worked on it for another hour and about 3 hours after I pulled out of the grocery store parking lot, the car was back in the garage. He even brought the groceries upstairs.
It was a harrowing trip. But dinner was great. And Huck has no idea the adventure he missed.
Oh, and did I mention? I usually live in paradise, but a few days a year I live in a blinding, blowing, snowing deathtrap.
