Last night I had an enjoyable evening in Manitou. Thinking it may be about time to head home, I looked out the window to find that it had begun to snow and had already snowed several inches. The last thing I saw when I looked before was some light rain. It felt as though in a span of about 10 minutes the world was covered in half a foot of snow. At that time I realized that it was more than time to head home.
I went out to the car, cleared the windows and the lights and began driving. It sucked. A lot. I could barely see where the street was let alone read the street sign covered in snow. Now, I don't spend too much time in Manitou but I've been there enough to know how to get home...or so I thought. I went what I thought was the right way and got onto hwy 24. Not too long into the 30 mph drive on 24 did I realize that I was not heading the direction of my home, but I was in fact heading West, up the mountain.
It was a very long, slow, nerve racking drive trying to find a safe place to turn around. There was a very long line of traffic behind me and I was driving very slowly trying to keep the sliding/almost wrecking to a minimum. I was super pissed as I approached the Smokey the Bear sign telling me the fire danger was low because I wanted nothing more than for Smokey to be a gas station. Not only had I driven approximately 25 miles in the opposite direction of my home, I did so with the fuel light blinking telling me I needed gas.
Where, you may ask, did I finally turn around?!? I drove all the way to Crystola before I felt comfortable turning around. Even then I wasn't positive that I was not going to be driving over a median to get to the East-bound lanes of 24 hwy. Soon after I turned around I was feeling a little better knowing I was going to right direction. I saw some break lights and hazard lights ahead. I slowed down and saw a cop in the middle of the left lane with a flashlight. He looked as though he was guiding the traffic around the other stopped cars. As I got closer I still wasn't sure, so I slowly prepared to pass the other cars. At that point he started yelling at me, the jerk! I rolled down my window, told him he wasn't making any sense and he told me to calm down. I wanted to get out and slap him. He had no idea the fragile Lauren he was dealing with at that point. I rolled up my window and started crying. I was sure that I was going to run out of gas and freeze and die 25 miles away from home.
As you may have guessed, I didn't die. After being stopped for about 10-15 minutes we began to move again. I stopped at the first gas station I saw. I got home only 2 1/2 hours after I left Manitou. Isn't that a stupid story?
6 comments:
NOT stupid, sounds exactly like something I would have done. (including the crying) Glad you are safe!
Sounds pretty shitty!
Meanwhile, we were stuck in your cozy apartment anxiously worried for your safety as we faced our biggest dilemma of the evening- should we have another cup of cocoa?
Please don't put us through that again. It was hard on all of us.
Aw, that stinks! I think nearly everyone has a story something like that -- one in which they felt scared and kind of stupid at the same time. I know I have several! (Stopping on a foggy two-lane highway late at night coming home from Bluffton to find out that my car was actually ACROSS the middle line!! Very very scary.) I am glad you're okay.
Sounds horrible. I hate driving in snow as it is. I am glad you got home safely!
Yeah - driving home from Bluffton in my little Toyota Tercel, a semi passed me and the force of the wind spun the car completely around on the snowy/icy road and I ended up in the center ditch. This is when I was teaching and I had a couple of students with me, riding back to Normal. Driving at night in the snow is about my most dreaded thing to do!
Laur - I'm so sorry. I had no idea you were out there on the road. If I had known I would have been worried sick. That's a scary story.
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