I hate snow
Unless it gets me out of stuff without me having to leave my apartment. For those of you who were unaware, there was this massive storm that hit the Midwest. And it really sucked. Hours of freezing rain, followed by hours upon hours of snow. And intense wind. This all happened Thursday night/Friday morning.
I, like most people, work. I knew a big storm was coming, so I was prepared to wake up early in case it was going to be bad getting to work Friday morning. So I woke up and looked out my window.
Shit. I'm pretty sure what I saw clearly qualifies as a blizzard. One lane of traffic cleared (there are normally 3 lanes with parking on both sides), and when I say cleared, I mean most of the snow is gone so there's only like 2 inches of snow covering the ice. Awesome. So, I'm like, well, they wouldn't cancel work would they? I decided I'd try to go to work, and if it was too bad, I'd just turn around. Oh how wrong I was.
So I pull out of the parking garage and immediately I sense something bad is going to happen. There's barely anyone on the road. I get to the third stop light and see the first stuck car of the day. My car is rear wheel drive, so I already know I'm optimistic thinking I won't get stuck somewhere.
I'm driving, I cross the bridge over the Illinois River and there's really only one lane open (normally there are 2) but it's not too bad, then I see 2 more cars stuck on the other side. Awesome. But, the roads weren't too bad, considering most of the snow had been plowed off, and the snow was pretty loose as it was. So I forged ahead.
I continue driving to work, and the closer I get to the building I work at, the fewer tire tracks I'm seeing. I'm assuming by this point we'd had probably 5-6 inches of snow. Now I work on a road that doesn't see too much traffic, except by people who work at my building (like 60 or so) and people who work at another building (a lot of people). But my building is all the way at the end of the street. So I'm riding in tire tracks, because I would most definitely get stuck if I weren't in them. I get to the first building where a lot of people work, and I'm thinking, ok, this is it. If I don't turn around now, I either make it to my building or I get stuck. So I shifted down and floored it.
I got stuck about 60 yards past that parking lot. So I was probably about 1/10 mile from my building. Shit. I was even in the 1 set of tire tracks I saw. So I probably spent about the next 45 minutes rocking my car back and forth in the snow, occasionally getting out to dig snow away from my tires. I was slowly getting somewhere, and it was at this point I had a decision. Obviously, I was trying to get back in my tracks, and then just turn around. Unfortunately, they had been filled with snow. So ideally I go backwards.
So after 45 minutes, I finally got moving. Unfortunately, all I could do was go forward. Now luckily, in the time that I'd been trying to get myself unstuck, 3 cars had driven past me to or from my building. So I was like, ok, get in those tracks, get there, turn around, get home. So I made it into the tracks, got about halfway between where I was and my building, got stuck again. This time I was in some shit. I again had to try to rock myself out, back and forth, and this time I was fishtailing big time, as is often the case when stuck with rear wheel drive vehicles. So any cars looking to get by would be making their own tracks, and I was now almost completely in the middle of the road at a diagonal angle.
I was super-pissed. I was very close to just calling a tow-truck, but who knows how long that would have taken. Finally, magically, this truck comes by with a plow on the front of it. The dude tried to plow as much away from the side and front of my car as possible, and made a path for me going the other way. After about 20 minutes more of rocking my car to finally get out, I make it out, and have just enough room to turn around without getting stuck. I take off in the other direction, trying to get out from where I was and I followed where the dude had plowed. Unfortunately, he only plowed about to the other parking lot. And a lot of snow had come since I'd last been there (about 2 hours had passed). So I'm driving, I come around a corner, and I see a truck sitting perpendicularly in the road, right next to the driveway it was either coming in or leaving from.
There was barely enough room to get past and I might have ended up going on the curb had I tried, or I might have slid into the truck, so I slowed down and got ready to help them out. I stopped, backed up a little bit. Uh oh. Stuck. Again.
They got the truck out of the way right after that, then heard my tires spinning. Two people came to push my car out and I took off after that. On the way home I ran 3 stop signs for fear of stopping, and almost a red light. I think I saw something like 6 more cars stuck (in the distance of about 2 miles) on the way home, until finally I made it to my parking garage.
So two hours and probably most of the tread on my back tires later, I made it home.
I, like most people, work. I knew a big storm was coming, so I was prepared to wake up early in case it was going to be bad getting to work Friday morning. So I woke up and looked out my window.
Shit. I'm pretty sure what I saw clearly qualifies as a blizzard. One lane of traffic cleared (there are normally 3 lanes with parking on both sides), and when I say cleared, I mean most of the snow is gone so there's only like 2 inches of snow covering the ice. Awesome. So, I'm like, well, they wouldn't cancel work would they? I decided I'd try to go to work, and if it was too bad, I'd just turn around. Oh how wrong I was.
So I pull out of the parking garage and immediately I sense something bad is going to happen. There's barely anyone on the road. I get to the third stop light and see the first stuck car of the day. My car is rear wheel drive, so I already know I'm optimistic thinking I won't get stuck somewhere.
I'm driving, I cross the bridge over the Illinois River and there's really only one lane open (normally there are 2) but it's not too bad, then I see 2 more cars stuck on the other side. Awesome. But, the roads weren't too bad, considering most of the snow had been plowed off, and the snow was pretty loose as it was. So I forged ahead.
I continue driving to work, and the closer I get to the building I work at, the fewer tire tracks I'm seeing. I'm assuming by this point we'd had probably 5-6 inches of snow. Now I work on a road that doesn't see too much traffic, except by people who work at my building (like 60 or so) and people who work at another building (a lot of people). But my building is all the way at the end of the street. So I'm riding in tire tracks, because I would most definitely get stuck if I weren't in them. I get to the first building where a lot of people work, and I'm thinking, ok, this is it. If I don't turn around now, I either make it to my building or I get stuck. So I shifted down and floored it.
I got stuck about 60 yards past that parking lot. So I was probably about 1/10 mile from my building. Shit. I was even in the 1 set of tire tracks I saw. So I probably spent about the next 45 minutes rocking my car back and forth in the snow, occasionally getting out to dig snow away from my tires. I was slowly getting somewhere, and it was at this point I had a decision. Obviously, I was trying to get back in my tracks, and then just turn around. Unfortunately, they had been filled with snow. So ideally I go backwards.
So after 45 minutes, I finally got moving. Unfortunately, all I could do was go forward. Now luckily, in the time that I'd been trying to get myself unstuck, 3 cars had driven past me to or from my building. So I was like, ok, get in those tracks, get there, turn around, get home. So I made it into the tracks, got about halfway between where I was and my building, got stuck again. This time I was in some shit. I again had to try to rock myself out, back and forth, and this time I was fishtailing big time, as is often the case when stuck with rear wheel drive vehicles. So any cars looking to get by would be making their own tracks, and I was now almost completely in the middle of the road at a diagonal angle.
I was super-pissed. I was very close to just calling a tow-truck, but who knows how long that would have taken. Finally, magically, this truck comes by with a plow on the front of it. The dude tried to plow as much away from the side and front of my car as possible, and made a path for me going the other way. After about 20 minutes more of rocking my car to finally get out, I make it out, and have just enough room to turn around without getting stuck. I take off in the other direction, trying to get out from where I was and I followed where the dude had plowed. Unfortunately, he only plowed about to the other parking lot. And a lot of snow had come since I'd last been there (about 2 hours had passed). So I'm driving, I come around a corner, and I see a truck sitting perpendicularly in the road, right next to the driveway it was either coming in or leaving from.
There was barely enough room to get past and I might have ended up going on the curb had I tried, or I might have slid into the truck, so I slowed down and got ready to help them out. I stopped, backed up a little bit. Uh oh. Stuck. Again.
They got the truck out of the way right after that, then heard my tires spinning. Two people came to push my car out and I took off after that. On the way home I ran 3 stop signs for fear of stopping, and almost a red light. I think I saw something like 6 more cars stuck (in the distance of about 2 miles) on the way home, until finally I made it to my parking garage.
So two hours and probably most of the tread on my back tires later, I made it home.
posted by Jtrouble at 2:57 PM
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