Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Part 1

This post has been super long overdue, so get comfy. Rob and I decided last year when he came from his annual manager's conference that I would go with him. It would be the first time in.. well ever that Rob and I went on vacation by ourselves. We arranged for Kassie to fly up and stay with the boys while we were gone. I went to pick Kass up on Thursday January 30th. Joey and I left 6am that morning, because remember folks it takes 5 hours just to get to the airport from my house, and her plane arrived at 11Am. It was a beautiful drive in, and Joey and I made it just as she arrived. We grabbed some lunch and headed straight back, as I wanted to be able to show her around town before it got dark. We made excellent time coming back, and I was sure we would make it home by supper. On the way, we saw a rainbow. We started chatting about rainbows and realized it wasn't just a single rainbow, but a complete double rainbow. It looked liked this:

Just after this, I noticed there was an accident on the highway and pressed my brakes to slow down. Then nearly shit a brick when I slipped and slid all over the road. You guessed it, I was on black ice. Luckily I was able to get the truck back under control. I had just passed a sand truck and pulled over to wait for it to pass, but it never showed up. Of course I was in an area with no cell service, so I put on my brave face and got back on the road. 130kms and over 2 hours later we came to the end of the highway from hell and arrived at the turn off for the ice road to my community. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and turned onto the bush road to get to the ice (for you Southerners and you Chris a bush road is a road cut through the woods that leads to the lake which we drive over to get to our community). No sooner did I have my sigh of relief that I slid off the road and into a snowbank. I was beyond pissed, and of course in the woods there is very little cell coverage. I tried to call Rob but I did not have service. At this point I'm in tears, more of frusteration than anything else. I got a hold of Rob and told him I slid off the road and for him to come pull us out. Every car that passed me stopped to make sure we were ok, but they couldn't really stop to help either because if they did they would also be stuck. And of COURSE I slid off at the top of a hill, so no one could really stop either. Luckily a very sweet man and his wife turned around when they saw me. He tried to stop beside me but slid right past me (he had a tow rope and was going to pull me out). He got out of his truck and told me to put it in 4 wheel drive, which should drive it out. I told him it WAS in 4H and I couldn't move. He told me to put it in 4L, but by this time I was so frazzled I kept screwing it up. And God love him, he said "Want me to do that for you? " And he jumped in the truck, put it in 4L and drove it out of the bank. I started to freak again because he nearly slid right into his own truck, but managed to recover it. I then stayed right in front of me until I met up with Rob. We made it back to the house, where I burst into tears like a blubbering idiot and couldn't stop. Great welcoming for my sister right?? All I could think about is that Rob and I had plane tickets to fly out the next day, so we had to leave the house at 6AM the following morning. I had no idea how I was going to get up the nerve to drive BACK over those roads, in the dark no less.

To be continued.........

2 comments:

jen said...

I had a wipe out on the 401 just like that with black ice, later driving home the grill fell off the bottom of my car. Totally unrelated, but it was just like "REALLY", I had a few tears too. I'm glad your ok! I'm looking forward to summer driving!

Trace said...

Glad everything turned out OK and the trip was relaxing for you.
I remember one time many years ago in Ontario, while drving I hit black ice and my car started to fishtail. I took my foot off the gas but it didn't seem to stop. I made sure there weren't any vehicles coming from either direction and hit the brake. The car did a 360 degree turn and I ended up in the right lane facing the direction I was supposed to be going. God was looking out for me that day.

Take care