Ever done a 360 in your car before?

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Sorry about the suspenseful title, but I’m going to have to give you some background information before the heat of the story.

So yesterday it was very warm during the day, so all of the rest of the snow that was covering the trees from Monday’s snow day fell to the ground and melted in the street. Last night, it got cold, 30 degrees (-1 celsius) cold. This means one thing: Black ice.

So it’s last night <present tense storytelling hack>. I’m driving down a road in my town that I drive down every Friday night to go to dinner. It has a crazy roller-coaster like hill that my friend and I call  “The Mikey Hill” (in honor of our friend Mike who lives close by), a tight corner, and a somewhat narrow bridge right after. No one really slows down per se because there’s usually no one on the road.

So here I come, as usual, over the mikey hill, around the corner, onto the bridge, until uhh oh. No traction whatsoever. How nice, or as my Spaniard friends would say, ¡Qué Bien! Thanks 10 pound yaris! My car slides to the left (as I turn to the right for the bridge). Then I spin the wheel the other way and it flies to the right toward the edge of the road. Then I spin it to the left again and end up right where I started (’cept for being off the bridge).

The effort to straighten out the car was hopeless and at this speed we’d end up in the woods if we spun off the road, so it was time to try the brakes. I slammed on the ABS equipped brake pedal and after a nice vibrating sensation (and a quick 360, and oh yeah, dodging a pole by three feet, literally), my car spun into the snowbank and got stuck with the back end in the middle of the road.

After taking a second to breathe, I realized that I needed to move the car out of the road before someone like me came and slammed into my car (or the pole next to me). I was with my 13-year-old brother, of course, who has never sat in the driver’s seat of a car, so his skills in reverse weren’t the best, and although my car weighs about 10 pounds, we couldn’t push it out of the snow.

My dad finally came (we were going to the same restaurant) and we flagged him down. He told us that he noticed the road being slippery and followed by telling me that I needed to learn how to drive. So I said “Hey, I think moving my car is a little more important than discussing this right about now. I don’t want to get crushed, nor does my car.”

I got them out in front of the car and we rocked it out of the snow.

So…

Good Times.

(more...) | Comments (1)

Feed Read more...

Footer