DEBORAH CROMBIE: Have you all been following the big storm, Eunice, in the UK? For all the moaning I've done the last two years about wishing I was on a plane to England, Friday was the one day I'm glad I was NOT landing at Heathrow!
I did, however, get to experience that hairy Heathrow landing second hand.
A guy in the UK named Jerry Dyer films the jets at Heathrow and uploads the footage to his YouTube Channel, BIG JET TV, and on Friday his channel went viral!
I should probably have put in a disclaimer with this link: Do not watch if you're afraid of flying.
This is crazy stuff! I'm really glad that all those planes got down safely.
Eunice blew down people's fences and sheds and took off roofs, including half the dome of the O2 Arena.
All of this brought to mind very vividly a trip I made to England in October of 1996. I had rented a car and was driving with a friend from Exeter in Devon to Bedford in Bedfordshire, intending to stay with my friend Kate Charles and her husband there. Not a bad drive, on a nice day.
But the storm closed in before we had left Devon. I have driven on ice in Texas (where were are never prepared.) I've driven in torrential thunderstorms and on the fringes of tornadoes, but I have never before or since driven in anything as bad as that storm. It was Hurricane Lili, and it caused 300 million dollars in damage.
Here I was, driving on the wrong (um, opposite!) side of the road, unfamiliar car (thank goodness I was accustomed to standard transmission), unfamiliar motorways, sky black as night, hurricane force winds, and rain so heavy it was almost solid. I couldn't see to exit the motorway, I could barely maintain a lane. We had no communication other that the car radio--no easy-access cell phones in those days. This went on for hours, and every minute I thought might be our last.
When we did finally reach Bedford, I was gibbering. It was all I could do to stagger from the car and collapse.
Why I didn't know I was driving into a hurricane that day, I have no idea now! Surely it can't have been the fault of the BBC meteorologists. But I promise you that I've been much more careful about weather warnings since, and I hope I never, ever get into a situation like that again.
How about you, REDs and readers? What was your scariest weather-related driving experience?
Oh, I saw that airplane landing on the news . . . scary, scary [but, obviously, a very good pilot] . . . .
ReplyDeleteDriving can be downright terrifying. As you know, I don’t like to drive, so I’m particularly hesitant to drive when the weather is bad. One afternoon many, many winters ago, I was driving extra-carefully because it had begun to snow . . . I hit a patch of black ice and the car just spun around in a circle. There are not words to tell you how terrified I was, but I managed to figure out how to get out of the spin, ended up pointed in the right direction, and safely arrived home [guardian angel working overtime] a few minutes later . . . .
I was once driving behind a car that did exactly that (but hydroplaning on a wet road). I can only imagine how scary it would be from the driver's seat.
DeleteThat feeling of utter loss of control is terrifying. Thank goodness for your guardian angel, Joan!
DeleteI did a 360 spin on black ice in my first car, Joan. Fortunately it was in an empty intersection. But, boy, did I learn to be cautious after that. I still remember that total loss of control so vividly.
DeleteI will tell you, right now, I am not watching that video, OK? Debs, that sounds so hideous, you are incredibly brave and incredibly lucky. One day, in the before times, I had an event in southeastern Massachusetts, I forget where. It was so incredibly snowy! Sleeting and snowing and raining and horrible. The library where my speech was scheduled had not called to cancel! And I kept thinking well, people are walking to this event, I have to go. And they had not canceled. Of course, intrepid Jonathan was driving, and he is such a good driver, and we gritted our teeth and got in the car and headed south. The weather got worse and worse and worse and incredibly worse. I tried to get through to the library, saying are you sure people are coming? This is pretty awful. But they didn’t answer the phone! Finally, somehow, someone called my cell and said the power was out throughout the town, and we should go home. It was terrifying. And I have never been so happy to go home.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that no one on the planning committee tried to call you as soon as the lights went out! What were they thinking, Hank? Driving in bad weather is terrifying.
DeleteOh, that is the worst, Hank, when you are committed to being somewhere and you think you have people counting on you. How terrible that they didn't call you to cancel!!
DeleteWhat impresses me, Debs, is that you're still (I assume) a happy, comfortable driver after this terrifying experience. I had a couple of near-misses (actually, I didn't miss damaging my parents' car, just missed getting hurt or killed) in my early driving days, caused by my inexperience and lousy driving skills. Since then (and we're talking decades ago), I've never enjoyed driving--it's just a chore that has to get done if I want to get somewhere--and I'm still a poor driver. Luckily, I don't have to do it very often, since I live in Switzerland, where you can get to even a mountain village by bus or train. You just can't be in a hurry. There may be only two buses a day to some tiny place, but at least those buses always leave and arrive on time. Some stereotypes about the Swiss are TRUE!
ReplyDeleteKIM: I have always been impressed with the punctuality of Swiss public transport. On my last (work) trip, I took a train from Zurich to Davos and it was punctual to the minute (similar to Japan).
DeleteKim, I HATE driving in the UK. And I now refuse to drive on the motorways, not because of Hurricane Lili, but because I've gotten in too many jams that lasted hours. The exits on British motorways are often at least sixty miles apart and if the traffic is stopped for some reason, you cannot get out.
DeleteWow, both your experience Debs and that scary landing. I love the guy behind the camera saying, "Got to put it down soon, mate!"
ReplyDeleteLots of driving scary blind in snowstorms here in the northeast. Thirty two years ago I had my little boys in the back seat and was driving solo to Ottawa to visit my sister. When I hit Montreal, so did the snow. The only thing I could see were the taillights of a big truck in front of me. I followed those two red lights for miles. Terrifying - but we made it.
I too have followed someone else's taillights and all I can say is that is its own type of scary. Wow. The stories here today!
DeleteAbout forty-five years ago, one of my sisters and I had attended the US Figure Skating championships, held in Hartford CT that year, and were on our way home in a snowstorm. We were on I 91 in whiteout conditions. My sister was driving. The snow plows had not yet come through, so it was impossible to know where the lanes were. There was a tractor-trailer truck in front of us. My sister followed the lights on the truck, and the tracks it made in the snow. She said “I don’t care where he’s going; I’ll keep on following him!” I have a lot of other stories about winter driving. These days I stay home if a flake is predicted! I eagerly await spring every year.
DeleteDebRo
I'm totally with you on that, DebRo! We stay home, too!
DeleteThis is timely... Last night I left the house at 5:30 heading to dinner with friends and a mile from the house, within about 10 seconds it went from totally clear and calm to total wind-howling whiteout. A snow squall. Fortunately I wasn't yet on the highway so I pulled into a parking lot. My wipers could barely keep up as I waited. And waited. Finally I called my friends to say I was turning back, and started for home. Five minute later when I pulled back into my driveway, the snow has stopped and there's barely a breeze. I'm sure my friends think I'm nuts.
ReplyDeleteBut smart Hallie, sheesh!
DeleteWe also had brief, intense snow squalls yesterday in Ottawa. One minute it's clear, then total whiteness with wind gusts of 70 km (40 mph) giving us a curtain of white.
DeleteI know you’re not nuts Hallie. We had this same kind of weather all afternoon yesterday . It went from slow snowing to heavy snow to sunny snow to wind-howling without in spaces of seconds, many times during the day. There’s no way I was driving in this weather. Even walking was not safe.
DeleteWhiteout not without
DeleteThat same type of squall hit here at around 4:00. By 5:00 the snow had ended for good.
DeleteWe went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner and the roads were icy, but Irwin is an excellent bad weather driver so we were fine. Their parking lot was treacherous and although I wore hiking boots out to dinner, I was still pretty nervous about it. (The food was great! The place was hopping and our favorite waitress told us it was the first time in months that it seemed like old times. Masks were off most servers and patrons.)
We had those squalls too, Hallie! Hugh and I were playing cribbage and at first we wondered if something was on fire outside. Incredible. Sorry you missed your dinner with your friends.
DeleteIn some places, the squalls left a layer of ice on the roads. Good call to go home, Hallie! Sorry you missed the dinner, but you'll live to dine another day!!
DeleteWe had something like that here yesterday afternoon. It was frightening for sure!
DeleteDebRo
I'm glad you went home, Hallie!!
DeleteDEBS: Yikes, for your drive during that hurricane. And I did watch that video. I agree with Edith about Jerry's line.
ReplyDeleteReading your stories, I am once again glad that I never learned to drive! With my bad eyesight (until last year's cataract surgery), I would never have passed a driver's test.
EDITH: Driving almost blind in a near-whiteout at night is scary. Glad you made it safely to Ottawa.
Grace, I know many people in the UK who don't drive. Public transportation is so much better there than in the US, and the driving test is so much more difficult!
DeleteI live in Wisconsin, where as the joke goes, previous generations walked to school several miles every day, in blizzards, and uphill both ways. We are used to snow, at least in theory. But the first winter I lived in my house, the winter was quite mild, up to the middle of December.
ReplyDeleteThe approach of a big storm had been foreast, but the middle Sunday of December was sunny and warm, so I happily spent most of the day neatly stashing all the summer gardening stuff in the garage, leaving room for my small car in the middle and leaving the snow shovel up front. Then, because the forecast for the next couple of days was so bad, I decided to go to my law office (where my computer and printer lived) and write an article that was due in a couple of days, intending to mail it out at the main post office, just a little out of my way on my way home.
I wrote the piece in about half an hour, printed it out, and stuck it into a big flat envelope (remember those?) But by the time I left the office, the snowstorm had started. By the time I got to the expressway, the snow was horizontal, and the freeway was slick with ice. The normally 20 minute drive took me an hour-- and then I still had to get home after posting the article!
I opted for city streets rather than the freeway, and again, a twenty minute drive took longer than an hour. My hands were gripping the steering wheel so hard they were cramping.
Once home, I put the car into the garage, grabbed the shovel, and shoveled my way back down the driveway to my side door. That was the first time I'd ever seen thundersnow, which moaned rather than banging and crashing, and there were flashes of blue lightning as well.
I came into the house, stashing my shovel in the back hall, and locked the door behind me, then took a long hot bath while listening to the storm. The next morning, when I looked out my front window at the foot of snow that had accumulated, I could see that the giant elm in front of my house had split down the middle; it was making ominous wood-cracking noises, so I called the Village, and they wound up taking it down a day later.
I have been reluctant to drive in accumulating (or accumulated) snow since then. I've done it when absolutely necessary, but never willingly.
Twenty or so years later, just as my most recent book (on the Constitution) was due, we had a two foot snowstorm on Groundhog day. I couldn't get out the side door, and had to dig my way from the front door to the public sidewalk and across it to the driveway and then back down to the side door. It took me the whole day. But at least by then, I was able to submit the book electronically, with no more driving to the post office. Thank heaven!
Thanks for the reminder of the days of sending paper manuscripts, Ellen! And of having to make copies of same!
DeleteBlack ice is the worst! Seeing other cars ahead slipping off the road? I hope never to experience that again. I did have some good friends who hydroplaned off their lane in a terrible rain and slid onto the other side of the highway. They were killed, their kids in back survived. So THAT'S what I remind my hub when he wants to go somewhere in awful weather.
ReplyDeleteThat is such a sad story, Roberta. It's a horrible way to lose friends.
DeleteI've been thinking, reading all these stories, that we are the ones who survived to tell the tales. Several people died in Hurricane Lili in the UK, in road accidents. I could so easily have been one of them. So awful about your friends.
DeleteI did a 360 turn on loose sand in standing water on a Cape Cod road. I joined a long line of cars on the shoulder of an Ohio interstate, prepared to hunker down in a ditch as a tornado passed. Black ice is the worst, followed by snow squalls. And I have had scary plane landings, though nothing like Heathrow.
ReplyDeleteI'm usually not a nervous flier, but goodness, I think I'd have been doing some deep breathing exercises if I'd been on one of those planes trying to get down at Heathrow.
DeleteThe greater joy of my retirement is not having to drive everyday in all kinds of weather. Living in Quebec, I had to drive to work in torrential rains, snowstorms and ice storms. The worst was ice storms of 1998 when I had no control of my car on the ice rinks that had become the roads for many days : very scary.
ReplyDeleteDANIELLE: Yay for being retired and able to stay safe at home.
DeleteWe are used to freezing rain storms in eastern Ontario but that 1998 Ice Storm was crazy.
We are always so glad we both work from home and don't have to drive in horrible weather. We have another ice storm expected here later this week.
DeleteWhat a coincidence, Debs! My husband just told me last night he'd spent a long time watching videos of planes landing at Heathrow--this same video.
ReplyDeleteYou don't really think of England, especially London, as getting such wind, but when my oldest daughter lived there in about 2006 there was a monster storm then, too. She and Zak, who was tiny and in a stroller, had just walked past a storefront, battling their way through wind, when just behind them she heard a terrific crash. An entire plate glass window had given way and been blown out onto the sidewalk they had just passed over. Christy had to sit down and catch her breath for a few minutes!
I've driven in lots of extreme weather over the years, and had some hairy experiences with ice (especially on Cincinnati's endless hills), torrential downpours on the expressway, and one memorable morning when if I had not stopped to fix an errant contact I'd have been crushed by a massive tree falling across the road I'd have been taking seconds later.
I think the most dramatic experience, which made the front news of papers across the country, was when I was following my boyfriend home from a weekend rafting on the New River, in about 1977. He had gotten there earlier, and I drove to West Virginia to meet him and the rest of the friends. We were all caravaning home through a little river town when there was a sudden and unbelievably heavy rain. The little town we were passing through had lots of underpasses below train tracks, and they filled up with water, very fast. Eric was in a VW van, and he stopped in the middle of an underpass, rolled down his window, and frantically waved me to turn around and go another way.
I backed up--in my TINY Honda Civic--and tried to figure out where to go to get back to the road. No cell phones then, and no road map, either. I feared I was getting farther behind the rest of the group (we were at the end of the caravan), so I hustled on to see if I could catch up to Eric again. We were all meeting at a restaurant on the river for dinner, and I had no money with me, and was worried I'd miss everyone.
We all met, except for Eric. He never showed up, and I had to borrow a couple bucks for my bowl of soup, and we finally all went home. I called and called him all night, no answer. Finally I got a call at work from him--asking me if I'd seen the front page of the paper. His van, the last I'd seen it, had been floating! And he ended up having to swim for safety! I'd had no idea or I would have waited for him.
The headline, by the way, was "A Whole Raft of Trouble a Raft Would have Helped".
I'm SO grateful that he made it, and that he'd waved me out. My little car would have drowned, and probably with me along with it. Never drive into moving water, people.
That's chilling, Karen. I would never do the stuff today that I did when I was young. Driving in snow and ice. Pulling over in blackout thunderstorms. Following someone else's taillights. Yikes. Driving up an icy hill in Vermont, sliding back down, taking out the road map and praying the other roads were sanded. And no way to contact anyone to let them know where you are!!
Delete/shivers/ Glad he made it out okay and that you didn't follow him under there!
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DeleteKAREN: Whoa, close calls! I see so many cars driving through standing water below underpasses or try to cross flowing water every year. It's just not worth it.
Delete(GO AWAY AUTOCORRECT)!
That story had me afraid you were going to tell us that Eric didn't make it! What a terrifying experience! My parents had a near escape from a flooded road when my brother was small, so I grew up having, "Never drive into water!" drummed into me long before I started driving.
DeleteIt never occurred to any of us that he was under water! After the fact it was pretty damned terrifying to consider. Luckily, he had his window open under the bridge to wave at me.
DeleteMy worst experience was driving alone from Boise to Portland in early November more than 30 years ago. My twin and I had been visiting our younger sister, and from Boise my twin had flown to Montana. The snow started a couple of hours after I left Boise and didn't get bad until I got to La Grande. I had no chains or snow tires. I made the climb up into the Blue Mountains and a winter wonderland. I was very fearful and imagining the steep descent on Cabbage Hill. I had a absolute stroke of luck when I found myself behind a snow plough. I followed it down the hill and somehow made it safely to Pendleton. Then I stopped at Denny's, shaking like a leaf and celebrated with breakfast.
ReplyDeleteAs a 9-1-1 dispatcher, I had to get to work no matter the weather. We don't get a lot of snow in Western Oregon, but we would have the occasional ice storm. I had my snow routes worked out (no freeway, just main streets that were usually sanded right away) and occasionally I would ask friends with 4 wheel drive for rides. In 2008, we had a major storm, described here by the Oregonian: "Measurable snow fell for 11 straight days and, with about 19 inches recorded, it was the snowiest December in Portland since records began." I had a friend bring me to work and brought a bag of clothes and my toothbrush. I had planned to stay at work, but two co-workers who lived within walking distance hosted me, one each night. I worked 12 hour shifts (and it's always crazy and short staffed at 9-1-1 during snow storms) and was glad to get out of there on Christmas Eve when my brother-in-law picked me up.
Gillian, my husband ran a 9-1-1 dispatch center for ten years, so I know all about the getting to work no matter what. They were always understaffed (and underpaid, I might add) so there was never any wiggle room on those shifts.
DeleteTrue story! Short staffing and forced overtime were a constant throughout my career. I'm sure it contributed to the early deaths of some of my co-workers. They are truly unsung heroes. I'm so glad to be retired and that I wasn't working in the summer of 2020 when we had protests every night and emergency calls held for hours. (To be clear, I am in favor of peaceful protest and have participated in many. In no way do I support the small minority of protesters who threw fireworks and frozen water bottles at police and tried to burn down the precinct buildings.)
DeleteI totally spun around 3 complete turns on black ice on a little back country road on my way to work in 1972 in my MGB. The roads were clear, the sun was rising, where did the ice come from? Probably snow melt. Br-r-r.
ReplyDeleteStorm Larry: In February 1978, I was coming home from an after school appointment and it had been snowing for just a couple hours. The roads were treacherous, cars were pulled over everywhere. When I got to the turn from the highway to go up the hill towards home, it was littered with cars sliding down. I pulled into an empty gas station at the bottom of the hill and drove in until my car couldn't move any further into the yard. I got out and walked up the hill in my "fashion boots" and was finally only about a mile from home when the local vet came by in his pickup truck and drove me to my street. (I switched vets after that.) Thinking back to how strong and hardy I was back in the day. I don't often drive in snow any more.
It helps not to panic! And to have a guardian angel, for sure. I've had several weather-related driving scares, but probably the worst was one Sunday when I took the boys--then toddlers--out for dinner. We sat near a window and I watched the sky darkening as a storm came up off the lake. I hurried them out to the car, got them strapped in, and headed home. It had become completely dark, the wind was whipping trees sideways, and rain was pouring. Ahead, stopped traffic and flashing red lights--the winds had sheared off a row of utility poles across the highway--wires were down and sparking. An officer directed traffic off onto a back road. And all the while, two little voices in the back were quite interested in the proceedings--and one piped up "Can Granny see in the dark?" The hair stood up on my arms. My mom had passed away when the oldest was just an infant, the youngest never knew her. We eventually found our way through a maze of closed roads and turning arounds to home. I'm convinced my mom was our guardian angel that night. Turns out a tornado had produced the damage.
ReplyDeleteFLORA: WOW, you did have a guardian angel.
DeleteFlora, that gave me goosebumps!
DeleteWow, Flora. From the mouths of babes!
DeleteI was probably 15 or 16 and my mom and I had gone to town for groceries despite the forecast for heavy snow. We planned to be home before it got bad. We didn't quite make it. Mom was behind the wheel when we hit a total white-out blizzard. We crawled at a snail's pace but the road surface was covered. No lines to follow. Zero visibility. I remember saying, "there's a bend in the road around here somewhere." Mom steered ever so slight to the left and almost immediately, a dark shadow loomed ahead. She stood on the brake and we came to a stop inches from a truck that had stopped. But had I not said anything and had she continued straight, we'd have hit a snow plow head on. None of the vehicles moved until the visibility cleared and we could sort ourselves out.
ReplyDeleteThat is such a scary memory! Look at all the terrifying drives described today, then choose one for your next book set in winter. Be sure to let us all know which one inspired you;-)
DeleteWow, Annette! How terrifying. And you should definitely use that in a book.
DeleteI'm sure there are many weather related scary moments for me. I mean driving home from work when the rain is coming down so hard and fast that it looks like an ocean is falling from the sky is never fun.
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps the worst was a snowstorm. My trivia team partners decided to stay home because we were supposed to get a storm. But it hadn't started by the time I got home from work and I had nothing to do so I planned to go. The drive over, still nothing. I kid you not, as I reached for the door handle to the restaurant, the snow just starts coming down.
By the time I left, I had to clean the car off and I'm driving on the highway and the road is covered. No plowing had happened yet so there I am doing 25 miles (AT BEST) down the middle of the highway as I followed what little pathway there was. Considering I usually go down the highway at somewhere north of the posted speed limits, it was definite slow going with white knuckles gripping the steering wheel every step of the way. Never doing that again, that's for sure.
The moral is always pay attention to the weather forecast!
DeleteI got caught out in a blizzard once, back when I was in college. The storm hadn't started yet when I left school, but by the time I was about halfway home the snow and ice were pelting down and the conditions were getting worse by the second. I missed one exit because my car slid right past it, so I would up detouring onto a service road through the airport and finally got onto the highway home. By that time visibility had dropped to mere feet, and my windshield wipers had giant chunks of ice on them. The defroster was able to clear a tiny patch of the windshield--about enough to allow me to watch the car in front of me. A whole line of us were crawling along at about 2 mph, when I saw the sign that said I was 6 miles from home. "Oh, goodie!" I thought. "In another three hours I'll be there!" It actually only took me another hour, but these days I never, never drive while the snow/ice/freezing rain is actually falling. Conditions can change too fast, and no destination is worth dying for.
ReplyDeleteGigi, your mention of windshield wipers has me remembering another terrifying drive. It was the early 1970's and my MGB ran out of windshield wiper fluid on I-95 in southern Connecticut the day after a snowstorm. The trucks were sending up sheets of muddy water all over my tiny car and finally the windshield was just a muddy mess. I pulled over and somehow got to a service station to replenish the fluids. It's hard to drive when you cannot see!
DeleteJudy, we had an MG Midget when we lived in England (ex-husband.) It was a terrible car under any circumstances!
DeleteToo true! And yet, such a fun car for a single girl!
DeleteGigi, "No destination is worth dying for." Perfect.
DeleteThe car I was driving that day was a Renault, with rear-wheel drive, but also the engine in the back, so it was kind of a snowmobile. Usually pretty reliable in bad conditions, but I guess the French never thought about building the defroster and the wipers stout enough to stand up to a mid-American blizzard.
DeleteWow. Reading all these brings back a few nerve wracking trips over the years, but mostly, I just want to sweep them all back into forgotten corners of my memory. What stays with me, though, is enough to make me always cancel plans when the weather is dangerous for driving.
ReplyDeleteWith Rick having worked too many accidents, first as a cop, and then running a 991 dispatch center, we are super careful. On the other hand, he's done a good bit of storm chasing--but you always stay behind the tornado:-)
DeleteAlways stay behind the tornado! Perfect words for every occasion!
DeleteI was driving back to Plattsburgh on the Northway in January. It was above freezing when I started out from Schoharie County. But as it got colder, there was rain, freezing rain, snow and sleet. For most of the 3-hour plus trip I didn't see another car that Sunday morning. Another car on the road, that is. I saw several off in the ditch. I was lucky if I saw tracks ahead of me. The night before I had gone out to dinner with my son and daughter-in-law and their 3-year-old. I kept remembering how that little girl had said to me "grandma, I hope you don't get dead." (Where do kids come up with these things?) The road, while mostly straight, involved many hills, so I never knew if I would make it up one or go sliding down the next. By the time I reached my destination, it was like a different world, dry and sunny.
ReplyDeleteOne other time I had an even worse experience and that was driving in an almost total white-out. I was less than 15 minutes from home but I could barely see the road. I would have stopped if I could see a safe place to pull into but I couldn't. There was no car ahead of me so I could at least follow taillights, but there were several behind me. Did they all think I actually knew where I was going? I've never been so glad to get home! And just a little while later, that storm blew away and all was fine.
Oh my gosh, Judi, that is terrifying. I've never driven in a whiteout, but it must be the absolute worst. So glad you got home safely!
DeleteThat video runs more than seven hours! What a day in the UK. I'm still catching up on my friends' storm damage.
ReplyDelete"thank goodness I was accustomed to standard transmission"
ReplyDeleteBut not on that side of the car!
Weirdly, shifting left-handed has never bothered me!
DeleteThat plane footage is insane!!! I love the narration but oh there were some nail biters!
ReplyDeleteI drove in a snopocalypse once from Boston to Worcester in a tiny Geo Metro (white) and had to draft in behind a tractor trailer. It took three hours. Ugh. Never again.
That Jerry Dyer is a hoot! And a celebrity after Friday.
DeleteWe've had a few over the years but the first one is embedded in my brain, partially because of the humor of the situation. I was in college and was riding in my big brother's Dodge van which also had 4WD you could shift into. Four or five guys and me were to go skiing in New Mexico during Thanksgiving break. And we were poorboying it, camping out in Ruidoso. We were driving up the mountain and every time we hit shade the road was iced over and we would slide. The guys would start yelling to put it in 4WD. Donald would grab the shift but would grab my knee instead as we were packed like sardines in that van. We survived that trip and fortunately the ice melted before we made our way back down the mountain.
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh, Pat. I could just visualize it!
DeleteWhen my middle daughter was going back from Christmas break to college in Boston, she left here, unbeknownst to me, with less than $5 in her pocket, thinking her hybrid Civic would get her back without needing to stop for gas. On the Pennsylvania Turnpike a blizzard was in progress when she started through, and she slid off into a snowbank in what was pretty much the middle of nowhere.
ReplyDeleteShe called me, and I stayed on the phone with her, trying to figure out what to do to help, when a snowplow came by. The driver got out and asked if he could help, and she told him she didn't have any money. He got her out, and refused to take her last couple bucks. Talk about an angel!
It's always heartening to know there are kind people. But I'll be your daughter never started out anywhere without some extra cash after that!
DeleteNever, or her cell phone!
DeleteOther times she would stay in touch with me on the phone, and I would toggle back and forth between weather reports and alternate routes she could take. All before GPS, of course.
Karen you WERE the GPS!
DeleteDebs mentions not having a phone to help in her terrible drive, but occasionally the phone can make things worse. I was driving in a sudden, almost white-out snowstorm and was transitioning from one highway to another when my phone started screaming a weather alert. I'd forgotten we were changing counties right at this junction and the county we were entering put out the alarm. I was already tense, and the screaming alarm made me jump and the car in front of me jerked to one side (I assumed their phone was screaming too). Worked out ok, but my heart was pounding the rest of the trip.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure the phone would have helped me that day, except to let my friends know we hadn't run off the road. Of course it would have been nice to have able to call for help if we had run off the road. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.
DeleteThat guy narrating the planes landing was great. I can see why people would watch the video. It didn't exactly scare me watching the planes wings dipping back and forth, but it did give me great respect for the pilots who had to land the planes. What's the best thing to have on a plane? An experienced pilot. Thanks for the video, Debs. It reminded me of when my husband was stationed at the Pentagon and we were at his apartment building where his friend has the penthouse apartment (it's a long story how that friend finagled getting the penthouse). I sat out on the porch area of it and watched the planes landing and taking off from Reagan National Airport. It was an excellent view. I was mesmerized by watching them one after another, with no long breaks between.
ReplyDeleteI have several stories that involve traveling in stormy weather. My first plane ride was from Lexington, Kentucky to Cleveland, Ohio. I was in college and going to visit my sister on Thanksgiving break. There was an awful storm, with dramatic lightning accompanying it. I was on a small plane, and I'm not sure how I ever decided to fly again after that. When I first got married, like six weeks after, my husband was at Ft. Knox and I was teaching. It was the weekend and we had planned to meet in Elizabethtown to grab some much wanted time together. Well, it snowed and snowed and snowed, but I was a foolish young woman in love and determined to get to my husband. They were closing the road behind me as I drove in some very risky conditions, but I made it. I have a couple of other snow driving stories, but I think the scariest weather related driving story for me was when I had my two small children in the car and was driving alone to my nephew's high school graduation. I was on the interstate, and the rain was coming down so hard, the only way you could navigate is by tailgate lights in front of you. I couldn't get off the road because if I left the car on, people behind me might mistake it for me being on the road, or I was afraid of being a sitting duck to be hit if I stopped. So, on I drove, praying all the way, and after what seemed like hours (of course it was more like half an hour), I arrived at the other side of the downpour. If it had just been me in the car, I wouldn't have been so scared. It was knowing I had my children's lives in my hands that was terrifying.
Stopping on the shoulder in that kind of storm is so dangerous. That's why I never did it in all that six or seven hour drive in England, although I was desperately tempted. Not that I could SEE the side of the road!
DeleteSpin-outs are so scary. Driving my VW to school when I was in law school, it spun out and wound up in the shoulder, facing the wrong direction. When the traffic thinned, I ventured back on the road. The scariest part of that was actually that I had my boyfriend with me (early in the morning) and an accident would have blown our cover.
ReplyDeleteI hit black ice on a round knob of road on my way back from my secretary's family's saint day party a dozen years later. I brought my car to a stop, facing the wrong way, right in the middle of the knob. I was about to start it up and try to get out of there when the car behind me hit the same patch of ice. I watched him slide towards me sideways, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop. I was already occupying the place he'd have to come to rest. I could see his face. So scary. Luckily, it was in slow motion, and we both walked away (literally) after they towed our cars. Funny, I have no memory of how I got home that night.
I hate winter driving. But being on the top of the highrise overpass on our central freeway, when a sudden rainsquall hit, wasn't much better-- because a fuse in my windshield wiper burned out and I couldn't see a thing.
I now have a tendency to stay home in bad weather. I've had enough driving adventures!
Yikes, Ellen! No wipers, eeek!
DeleteGreat heavens, Deb! That is terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI love to drive and have done a lot of it. I've seen a lot of weather. I have driven through super cells and skirted tornadoes. I've followed the Greyhound Bus over La Veta Pass in Southern Colorado and had the State Police close the road behind us. I've crawled down that hill in Scranton, Pa when they should have closed the road. I've bumped over snowy and muddy washboards on dirt roads and survived head-on crashes on New England rural roads in curtains of rain. But driving the 401 in Southern Ontario in the winter has caused me to put away my keys in bad weather.
ReplyDeleteI was driving West on the 401 taking a team to a bridge tournament in London, Ontario one February. This is a stretch of road with the reputation as the most deadly in North America. The pavement was plowed but there were significant icy patches and the stretch between the eastbound and westbound lanes was wide and icy. A red car in front of me slid off the road, across the ravine between the lanes and into a semi truck. The wheel of her car came back across the median and skidded across the lane in front of us. Later I discovered the occupants of the car were a woman and her dog.
Later that same year, we had played a bridge tournament in Oshawa - east of Toronto. We knew the storm was coming but the road between us and home was all highway and most of it through Toronto, so it shouldn't be bad, right? The skies were clear when we stopped for dinner. By the time we finished dinner there was an inch of snow on the ground. Traffic through Toronto was moving at 45km/hr (30 mph) on the major highway. Once out of town, we had about 60 kms of rural highway to get across. I was very glad that there was a person in front of me and that they didn't skid off the highway that night because their tail lights were the only thing keeping me on the road. When we got home that night, I promised that I wasn't doing that ever again. And haven't.
Scary trips? I grew up in the snow belt of northernmost New York, similar latitude but other side of state from Julia's fierce settings. The sudden snowstorm that could you leave you stranded on the side of the road for many, many hours was real - several family members had that experience - but my worst only had below freezing temps- WAY below freezing. I used to fly into Syracuse for visit home and my parents would pick me up there and drive north on the Interstate (81) about 65 miles. Plane got in about 11 PM. We headed up the very dark, very empty highway - easy trip- when the car started sputtering and finally died half way home.Nothing my dad did worked. We were not far from an exit ramp, so he walked up the ramp and luckily there was a house nearby. Someone was up watching tv! She was pretty startled to see strange man on her porch but help was called and he returned to the stalled car. We just hoped there was enough fuel to keep the heat on. Luckily, state police were out that night, looking for people in just this kind of trouble. They were there soon, took us up to the county line where we were met by police from the next county who took us home. I slept late the next day but my dad had the joy of dealing with the the abandoned car.In those days, before cell phones, truth is that we could have frozen if we'd been there all night.
ReplyDeleteI've only just now had a chance to read all your stories. So glad they all ended in safety.
ReplyDeleteI almost stopped breathing a couple of times! Thanks for sharing.
Every once in a while, on a plane, I am hit with the realization that I'm locked in a metal tube with wings riveted to it to keep it afloat, a laughingly ridiculous idea. And then, if the plane jiggers even a bit, I have to force my brain to pivot to something, preferably a book in which everyone stays on the ground!
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