Ice Storm

There is a big snowstorm blowing-in from Alberta overnight tonight. When I think about a big storm, I’m reminded of February of this year.

It was Valentine’s Day: an excellent day for a funeral. My last remaining grandparent was interred in a mausoleum just outside of Cincinnati. I was with my mom and we were about 200 miles from our house in Toledo. We had just spent a week with my aunt and uncle and my two young cousins. Our nerves were frayed already from the lack of a volume knob on the kids so we decided to head back after the funeral.

The car we were in was my mom’s 1997 Dodge Neon with an automatic transmission and bald tires.

We got as far as Dayton before things started getting sketchy. It had been raining ever since we left my uncle’s house. As soon as we got to Dayton, our fortune had turned into utter chaos. The rain had turned to freezing rain and snow. Any water that had been on the road had turned to ice.

There were some people who were “hot-dogging it”; but they soon learned their lesson. I saw one of them spin out of control right into the ditch. I wouldn’t be surprised if the car was a complete loss. It was quite spectacular.

It usually takes us a good half hour to get through Dayton on a good day with normal traffic. That day it took us a good hour to get through.

After that nightmare of white knuckle driving, my knuckles found a new shade of white. About twenty miles north of Dayton, things went downhill fast. It was near white-out conditions. The snow was about six inches deep and drifting across the road. The only way I could tell where the road was, was by seeing where the trucks made tracks. I could also follow them by faintly seeing the red taillights of the trailers off in the distance.

We went at a steady 25-30 MPH crawl following the same truck in a single-file line all the way to Wapakoneta.

By then, it had been four hours. Our nerves were fried after losing traction several times and maintaining a steely concentration on the road. We were also running low on fuel. I drove 100 miles and it just plain sucked. We were only at the half-way mark.

We were wondering if we should stop but the fuel situation settled that. Once we pulled-off of I-75, the snow had drifted over the road. It was about a foot deep in most places.

We filled the tank, got some coffee and got rid of some and then we were on our way. The snow was a foot deep at the gas pump and all the way back out to the road. My best bet was to tread where no other vehicle had tread. I got decent traction all the way to the road. I had to stop due to a big rig creeping by. That’s where I ran into trouble. It took a good five tries to get back on the road. I would skid sideways, the wheels would hook-up for about two feet and then I would be back in the same situation.

When I finally got back to the highway, it was back to the 25-30 MPH grind.

By the time we finally made it to Lima, the plow trucks had finally started plowing. But that was only for about ten miles. Then it was back to the six inch deep crap. I think it was at this point that I realized that we were the only passenger vehicle on the road. Everything else was big rigs.

We pressed-on through Findlay, Bowling Green and every other little farm town until we got to Toledo. By the time we got to Toledo, I was confident enough in my driving abilities to allow the radio to be turned-on. We learned that the entire state was under a Level 3 Snow Advisory. For those not in the know, that is where no one besides emergency personnel are allowed to be out on the roads. That explains why there wasn’t anyone else out on the roads. What were the cops going to do really? We were already in Toledo. They might have just told us to go home. Trust me; at that point, I wanted to be nowhere else.

I-75 twists and turns through Toledo like a season of Dexter. By the time we finally got off of 75, we had seen 24 cars in the ditch. We were fortunate enough to not be one of them.

The side streets were either as bad as the highway or plowed with a solid sheet of bare ice. I preferred the former.

The driveway was eighteen inches down in the snow. The steep incline at the end of the driveway was no easy picnic to get up either. I tried getting a good run for it and just gunning it hard; but the automatic transmission really sucked at controlling torque on the wheels.

We tried shoveling the driveway, salting the ice (with temps below 17º, it didn’t help). I finally ended-up getting my neon with a manual transmission and new tires to tow Mom’s car up the driveway. That was a barrel of monkeys.

I think after the harrowing eight to ten hour journey from Cincinnati, I soaked in a hot bath until it was cold to relieve the tension and then slept for twelve hours.

I’m sure that wasn’t the last or the worst I will ever drive in. One could only hope.