End of break adventures

Can I just say, I love my husband? Because I do, I really, really do. He does his best to do what he can, when he can, to help me have adventures. He tried to take me up to the mountains yesterday to have some fun in the snow. Our tires, however, even though they are snow tires, did not have great traction. It was snowing heavily and there was a lot of ice. We had some really frightening moments when we broke free and were sliding all over the road. Oh, and did I mention we were also towing a trailer with our Polaris RZR on it? Luckily, we had it because we got stuck in the snow and he was able to use it to pull our truck out. And still, we continued up the mountain. There wasn’t a place to turn around, but he also still wanted to go up, so up we went. It was going relatively well, but then we got stuck behind a plow…

We had to go slow behind the plow, so because we lost so much momentum, we eventually broke free on the long uphill section of road we were on. We kept sliding back down incrementally. It was a losing battle. He finally decided it was time to turn around, so around we turned…sliding sideways…the trailer sliding down faster than the truck could make the u-turn. The very frightening (for me) experience was not fun, but I trust him with my life so I just calmly sat back and let him work. We finally got turned around – then slid across the road into the freshly plowed berm on the opposite side of the road. I reminded him to not get mad, that that doesn’t help him think clearly to get us out of the situation. He calmed down and thought it through and managed to get us free and moving VERY SLOWLY down the hill. We had a very touchy, but relatively smooth trip down the mountain. That wasn’t the case for several others that ended up stuck, crashed, and surrounded by other helpful people that were valiantly coming to the rescue.

Then it was our turn to be the valiant ones. We came upon a man in a Ford Explorer that wasn’t sure how to get the vehicle into 4-wheel drive mode and had slid nearly off the road down the hill. Like, his front passenger-side tire was over the edge of the top of the hill (not a drop-off cliff, but a steep hill into the forest.) Jason pulled to the side of the road on the left side of the road since we were right before a curve and he wanted to make sure people saw us and didn’t hit the Explorer and send him over. I sat in the truck for a while, but as a little time passed, I decided to get out of the truck to see if the guy needed anything, like a snack or whatever. As I got out, a big Dodge Ram comes around the bend. I stopped at the side of our truck and looked back to see, but the truck was going slowly and seemed to be in control. I stood there for a minute before deciding that everything was fine for me to keep going. I cleared the end of our truck just as the Ram skid all the way up against our truck! I was completely unscathed, though terrified, as I ended up between our truck, our trailer, and the other truck in that small square of safe space. I stupidly had put my hands out to stop their truck, or something (???) but everything and everybody was just fine! Even our trucks suffered only mild surface scrapes. They were very nice people, and eventually a CHP officer, happened upon the scene. He called a tow for the poor guy in the Explorer, and we separated our truck from the other and we all went on our merry way after about 45 minutes or so.

It struck me after the first 15 minutes of shock that I almost died. Like, I was almost crushed between 2 trucks! My first reaction had been to make sure the couple in the truck were fine, and then to assure them that I was fine. I wasn’t quite fine though as I began crying and telling Jason what happened. He hadn’t seen anything that happened, and thought I was inside the truck when the accident occurred. He had heard my embarrassing use of the F-word, but didn’t see what happened as he was inside the Explorer helping the other guy. Luckily, I had a pre-scheduled appointment with my counselor this morning, so I was able to talk about it and work through the shock. We made it home safely, as evidenced by this blog post. There’s also no denying – it was certainly an adventure after all!