All of this took me back to a time when I was a complete dumb ass about snow and ice, and nearly got myself killed.
Todd and I were living in Bay City, Michigan at the time. It was a Sunday and I had spent the day in Mount Pleasant watching the Daytona 500 with a friend. Todd had called me and told me that the snow was starting and I should get going. But I dawdled and left much later than I should have.
At the time, I was driving my VW New Bug. I had bought the car in the springtime and didn't take into account that it was super low to the ground and therefore not ideal for traveling in the snow.
I took it slow and the trip from Mount Pleasant, which normally only takes about an hour, took forever. Even going slow, I was sliding a lot. I was on the highway and just at my exit when I slid into a snowbank just off the road.
I started doing the go forward, go backward thing to unstick myself. I had been doing this for a few minutes when I looked in my rear view mirror. There was a semi bearing down on me, and I knew the driver wasn't in total control of his rig.
Just at that moment, I got unstuck and I gunned it a little to get out of the semi's path. I knew in my heart that if he had hit me, I would have been dead. The rest of the drive home, I sobbed my eyes out. I have never been so scared in my life.
Todd comforted me when I got home, but in typical Todd fashion he also told me that I should have listened to him. I agreed - I had been totally dumb for not listening to him and leaving sooner before the roads got so bad.
Since moving to NC nearly 10 years, I haven't had much chance to drive on icy roads. We don't get a lot of snow and when we do, things shut down. I usually just stay inside, especially since I started working from home.
Today I'm glad to be inside and not on the icy roads. I wouldn't want to have a repeat of that scary night all those years ago.
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