Winter's Last Laugh

Winter’s last laugh was on us, apparently.

I went to writing group last night. It had been a long time since I’d been able to make the trek (it’s a 40 minute drive with traffic and a 32 minute one without) and I needed their camaraderie and a chance to laugh and get my mind out of my body and into my writing. Snow was forecast but only a dusting, the weather report claimed. The roads had been cleared since the big storm, our driveway was navigable, and even if there was a little wet snow, the temps were hovering slightly above freezing so I didn’t worry about any of it sticking to the roads.

But my usual weather forecasters, the most reliable ones I’d had experience with, were wrong. As I started driving, the skies turned from flecked with the occasional flurry to a more persistent snow shower. Yet still the roads remained merely wet, my outdoor temp monitor continued to read 32, and I felt that reassuring crackle as salt pellets rattled around my wheel wells. (those of us in the north know that this means the sander trucks have been by, reducing our chances of going slideways off the roads) Which was very important to me, because with the mild winter I hadn’t bothered to put on my snow tires.

I had fun at group, which I always do, and had a chance to read a piece of my current novel in eternal progress, and see a DVD of one of our member’s comedy act, and then I ducked out early, since I have less confidence in my driving ability as the night gets later.

But I had a good couple of inches of heavy, wet snow to clean off of my car first, and it was now coming down hard. I took a deep breath, settled into my seat and started home. The side roads were lightly dusted, and the main roads wet with a bit of slush, but when I crossed the bridge and continued heading north, it got worse. I didn’t have the confidence to go over 45 even though it seemed like other people (with better tires) were going faster. Steady but surely, I kept driving. Then I had to turn onto the side road that eventually would lead to my neighborhood. That good couple of inches were down on that road, and it looked like nothing resembling a municipal sander or plow had been by. This is an area fraught with dips and twists, one particularly evil one where you’re heading steadily downhill and into a curve. I made it through that but started to notice that I was having a little problem making it up hills. Like a marathoner running out of steam. I took another deep breath, prayed that the force be with me, and kept on going. Finally, I got to the place in the road – a greenhouse – that always was my signal that I’d made it, that one short little quarter-mile or so and I’d be in my neighborhood.

Well, thank something, I thought, when I pulled off and discovered that our neighborhood was maintained better than the town roads.

But I still had to climb the big hill to my house. And as I climbed, the snow got deeper, and I was having more and more trouble. I couldn’t get purchase, I’d give it more gas, I went into a lower gear and that helped, and I fishtailed a little around the big curve at the top, and finally, finally I passed our house and got to the neighbor’s, where I could turn around. See there’s a trick to our driveway. I might have mentioned this before, that it hooks backward from the road and in bad weather, you have to turn around in the neighbor’s driveway and approach our drive from a better angle, and gun the engine so you can make it up the hill and around the curve of death, as I’ve lovingly grown to call it.

But last night the problem lay in the turning around part. In low gear, going forward, I was getting enough traction to make it through. In reverse, I had no purchase at all, and just spun my wheels. After a few attempts and turning, I ended up sliding my front tires over the lip of the pavement and landing with my nose in a snow bank.

Fortunately, the neighbor whose house I’d wedged myself in front of were the hardy sort, even owned towing gear and a Bobcat. Cursing at my stupidity and condition of my tires (oh, why hadn’t I put on my snows, oh, why, oh why????????), I trudged up their driveway. And I do mean “up.” This place ain’t called the hill for nothing. And the last time I walked up a steep hill I paid for it. But I wasn’t thinking about my back at the time. My mind was afroth concocting Plan A, then Plan B, then Plan C.

Neighborette answered my plaintive knock, in her beddy-bye gear, and I felt guilty as hell. I hadn’t woken her, she said, but she and hubby were about to settle into bed and watch “Dancing With The Stars.” (which reassured me that we weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the guilty pleasure of dumb reality shows) But still, I felt bad. She got hubby up and they got dressed and followed me down their walk and then the driveway (she, shoveling a clear path in front of me, bless her) and pushed me free. I thanked them with all of my heart, then put my heart back in my chest when I thought, “I still have to get up my #$*%@($& driveway.”

But at least I was pointed in the right direction.

I hit the gas. Not too hard, because that would send me sliding, but just enough to try to gather enough momentum to get up the hill.

Apparently, though, I hadn’t. Because I got stuck on the straight run up that leads into the curve of death, and all the gas I gave it couldn’t do more than make my tires spin and create that awful burning rubber smell. I feared backing down and trying to gun it up again, but I had no traction in reverse and would only slide all the way down to the road, if I ended up in the road at all.

So I did what any independent, post-feminist babe would do. I yanked on the emergency brake and trudged up the rest of the drive to get my husband.

I knew he wouldn’t be happy. Yes, he’d be happy that I made it home in one piece, because he warned me that he’d seen a weather forecast that said we’d be getting 1-3 inches (and when those Alberta Clippers come by, normally we get another inch or two on the hill) and I left blithely telling him I wasn’t concerned, because my source, my most reliable source, called for only a dusting.

But he wouldn’t be happy if he had to dig me out of some snow bank, because he’d pulled a muscle in his back a few days ago and didn’t want to strain it again. I didn’t want him to do that either, and thought he’d have the guts I lacked to ease the car down the hill, get back up the road and channel Tony Stewart to gas it up and make it to the top of the driveway and into the garage.

Which wouldn’t strain his back at all.

He was gone for a long time, which made me worry. At least I didn’t hear any tire-spinning. Or hadn’t gotten any calls from a neighbor telling me my husband was ass-up in a ditch. Then, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I poked my snoot out door to the garage. And my car comes rolling in. Husband gets out, triumphant. And retrieves our snow shovel from the back sheet.

Oh, crap.

He explained how he had to shovel a little from the front and from the back to get the car going with any kind of control, and backed down, then did the Tony Stewart thing, yadda, yadda, yadda. “And,” he said, “I pulled my back again!”

Oh, crap.

“But I got your car up the driveway,” he says.

I explained to him that people are worth more than cars, but I had a sense that I was just wasting my breath. I thanked him for saving me and rubbed some magic healing ointment on his back.

He’s not a happy camper today, nor am I (the hill I hiked up bit me in the butt shortly after I woke up this morning), and I'm feeling very guilty about dragging him out into the snow, but I think he’ll be OK. And so will I.

The sun has gotten to the driveway and I can see from the upstairs window that the place where I got stuck is now clear down to blacktop, as is the road below.

And I am pretty sure that this will be the last of the snow. (I said that last time, too, I believe)

But if I’m going out at night again in the next few weeks, I might do well to take a survey of weather forecasts. Because it seems too late to put on the snows.