Sic Semper Tyrannis

Harrowing

I’ve been afraid for my life exactly two times in thirty-one years.

Both times have involved driving.

The most recent occasion was a little over a week ago. The weather forecast here in Oklahoma City called for light snow and freezing rain- not ideal driving conditions, but certainly nothing insurmountable. Wichita, my destination, went on to have 6 ½” of snow that day, the most since 1899, and I’m pretty sure that 90% of that total fell while I was on the Kansas Turnpike. Once I got to Blackwell the rain tunred into snow, which was sticking to the concrete on the interstate, slowing traffic to something like 40 mph, the perfect environment for Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. I thought Jeff Tweedy’s subdued voice would comfort me like a warm blanket and help the miles clip by. I was right.

...Until I hit the toll booth marking the beginning of the turnpike. Conditions and temperatures had decayed to the point that many people had pulled off to the side of the road to clear windshield wiper blades of ice and, if they were like me, regain some initiative. Little did I know what was in store.

A slight weather inconvenience turned into heavy snowfall. The surrounding fields had turned into sheets of white, enshrouded by heavy freezing fog as traffic slowed to a crawl. “It’s only a few more miles. I can handle this,” I thought. Bad turned to worse as the exit to I-135 became backed-up. I sat parked, all alone, looking at the back of a semi through the snow for about 45 minutes. Wilco proved to no longer be an acceptable distraction from “what-ifs” and creeping worry. I started to talk to God and put in some Beethoven Piano Concertos to perhaps numb my mind.

But at times like that, strange thoughts occur, mostly about society and civilization and how it all is balanced on a knife edge. “Introduce a little chaos like strange weather into our systems and who knows what is possible and what people are capable of doing,” I thought. I wondered stupid things, like if car tires or suspensions or banked turns or interstates are designed with absolute blizzard conditions in mind. To foster some hope I introduced the idea that surely some intelligent engineer had my personal safety in mind when he/she put together the plans for this turnpike.

I was ecstatic to see one highway patrol car pass by. It was encouraging to think that someone knew that all of us strangers were sitting here waiting for something to happen. The semi in front of me was directed by the cop to give up on this exit and those of us behind him were apparently supposed to do likewise. I had one slight problem with this course of action: I had never driven anywhere in Kansas beyond that exit before, even in ideal weather conditions, much less when I could literally see nothing but white in front of me. This was the time when I had to turn off the music. Desperate times…Luckily I had a fully-charged cell phone to call my Father for guidance home, (the metaphorical nature of which doesn’t escape me.)

This was the scariest part of the trip. It was “white-out conditions,” as they say. Usually when you drive in winter you have the tracks of the cars in front of you to serve as a guide. No such luck on this day. The snow was falling too rapidly. I was forging a new path through snow of unknown depth on unknown miles of highway, barely able to make out overhead signs, expelling myself into a white void. The only markers of the passage of distance were the occasional abandoned car that had obviously careened off the road into a ditch or a wreck that just appeared out of the fog with no warning. It was like a slow-motion white nightmare.

I knew one thing. I could not let the car come to a complete stop, as that is most likely where the car (and I) would remain for many hours, in the middle of nowhere, slowly freezing to death.

The gods of winter weather highway protection were smiling down on me as I slowly inched my way to my destination- phone in one hand, the other hand steering, more like suggesting a direction for the car to continue, mostly driving on faith. A trip that normally takes 2 ½ hours wound up taking about 6 hours.

I was never so happy and relieved to be off the road and with my parents.

posted by Mike @ 7:56 PM