The Way-Too-Long Way Home

Fasten yer seatbelts: squalls be not just for pirates anymore.
​
By Zach Hively

Listen up: under any of the available definitions of the term, I am the only man of the male gender in this vehicle. It’s a wonder I checked the weather before we left, considering I knew that two far more responsible non-men of a non-male gender would be escorting me.

Had the weather looked bad, I would not have dared to speak up first about maybe considering possibly staying home. Snow does not intimidate us men of the male gender.

Instead, I would have waited for the other two to make the smart choice. Then I would have tried to earn brownie points by Trusting Their Intuition and Supporting Their Decision. And then I would have suggested we get takeout.
​
So, to recap: the call to drive from Colorado Springs to Denver—and back again!—with a thirty percent chance of just 0.01” of snow was both entirely sensible and entirely not mine to make.

Detroit Electric auto on promotional tour through mountains. Cress-Dale Photo Co., Library of Congress Free to Use & Reuse.

Anyway, there we are, dancing in Denver, an hour from our beds and a freezer stocked with late-night tater tots. And our designated navigator shows me the notification on her phone: a winter squall has blown across the interstate corridor, and everyone is advised not to brave it.

What else can one do with a squall but brave it?

No, for real. I don’t know what a squall is. But if pirates in the 1760s can survive them--without the aid of weather apps and G-maps—then we, who have celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day since approximately the 1770s, should be able to trust that it’ll all blow over in the next couple hours.

Again: the two people here who are not men of the male gender are making sensible, informed, modern-day choices, which I endorse. These two drive this route every Tuesday night, except for six of the last eleven Tuesdays when the forecast looked sketchier than a raccoon with a switchblade.

It just so happens that on this Tuesday, G-maps is now reporting that some semis have jackknifed on the interstate. These are causing delays but no real concerns. Semis are always jackknifing on interstates, even in purported first-world nations.

So we head home.
​
We reroute on some familiar-to-the-driver-who-is-also-my-girlfriend-so-of-course-I-trust-her back roads. G-maps says it’ll take us nearly two hours to get home that way. Not bad; where I live, I drive nearly two hours to stock up on bananas.

I ride shotgun, despite being—as established—the only man of the male gender present. What can I say? We buck tradition. It looks as though the sailing be smooth, yarrr; there be no sign of squallage outside of some snow being stuck to these here metal street signs.

Until, very suddenly, there be.

We spot a short line of stopped taillights ahead. The taillights are easy to see, because we are not near any other source of light for miles on this two-lane back road. Our Backseat Navigator says that G-maps says there isn’t any significant delay.
Then we hit ice.

Our captain, my girlfriend, keeps going. She passes some of the stopped cars because, if we stop, we maybe can’t go again.

Then we have to stop because a Ryder truck is skidding sideways up ahead.
So we stop. On an uphill. With drop-offs on either side.

And a pickup truck stops right behind us.

And a sporty little Lexus, almost certainly with features like “turbo,” gets cute trying to go around the Ryder and slides off the road at the top of the hill.
We are—in a family-friendly word—stucked.

Automobile stuck in ditch on road. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Free to Use & Reuse.

So stucked.

A stream of cars with the same idea as our squall-braving captain passes us in the icy left lane, only to get stucked themselves behind the Ryder truck they could see from half a nautical mile away because we could see it from half a nautical mile away, only it wasn’t quite so stucked yet when we saw it.

As if all this weren’t treacherous enough, the wind is quite possibly still squalling out there, too. (I don’t know the threshold for squall winds.)

All the cars now stuck in the left lane, many of which (entirely coincidentally I’m sure) have Texas plates, are interfering with the valiant windblown attempts to winch the Lexus out of a ditch. The car thermometer appears stuck at 25°F. I don’t believe what it reads. (That’s degrees Fahrenheit, not degrees of the F-word I am hearing many times from the rest of the crew.)

It's not safe, or even possible, for us to turn around. No room to try going forward, because we have no room to slide backward. Oh, and I should mention that of the three of us I am dressed most appropriately for our predicament: I am wearing slacks, not engineered for winter squalls but at least my legs are covered.

And I, as passenger, have one critical responsibility: I must choose whether to ration the water remaining in my bottle for the hours, possibly days, of being stranded to come; or, to go ahead and, erm, make the bottle available for all three of our uses, which we might need after finishing the water left in it.

Some hours in, time has ceased to have any more meaning than the tater tots we cannot reach. This is when our captain looks deep into my despairing eyes and asks me if I will drive.

I—again, the only man present—am man enough not to give any answer at all for some long, stone-faced, manly moments.

And then I am man enough to say, “I will … if you really, really, REALLY need me to.”

It’s true that I would.

It’s also true that, with me at the helm, we might remain completely stucked on that hill. Even after the sun rises and the ice melts. Even after tow trucks have cleared all the Lexuses and Texans.

Because I carry a truth deep within me. And I watch as our captain realizes it, in real time. Her face dramatizes a masterclass in rational thinking.

She learned to drive in Michigan. This car is her car. Her insurance rates are herinsurance rates.

And her valiant passenger, in car and in life? He learned to drive in New Mexico. Albuquerque has, according to legend, only one snowplow—and most winters, one snowplow too many.

She might be wearing a pink and turquoise skirt. But, avast ye hearties, she is also the only one here wearing pants.

She doesn’t ask me again.

Race car driver Joan Newton Cuneo, seated in racing car. Harris & Ewing photograph collection, Library of Congress Free to Use & Reuse.

But that’s not to say I am worthless.

As a matter of record, I have a litany of motivational phrases that I am certain everyone in this car appreciates. I also now have an empty water bottle that comes in very handy.

Right after I brave the squall to dump it out—a squall that is definitely still squalling and definitely well under twenty-five degrees—the Ryder truck gets enough unstucked for the rescued Lexus to blow by it and for our captain to find just enough traction to get us up the hill and holy fishtails we are on our way.

We are on our way very slowly, but we are moving. Our Backseat Navigator continues reassuring us with G-maps’ time estimates, which we ignore because even while being perilously stucked it told us we’d be home soon.

I now become, functionally, the Lane Assist Feature. The squall winds are blowing squall snow across the icy squall road, making for some vertigo for the captain. “You’re good” becomes my mantra. “You’re good, you’re good, you’re good, you’re good, you’re good, you’re veering left but you’re good, you’re good, you’re good,” and I’m soon so lost in tracking that hidden white line that I forget to keep using my motivational phrases.

This is the most alert I have ever been in a vehicle moving less than ten miles per hour. I know I’m going to brag about our captain after this one. I’ll write about it so the whole world knows she saved our lives. When we make it to safe haven, I’ll tell everyone about how, right before we returned to the interstate, we passed a sign that warned of a downhill ahead with an 11% grade, which I didn’t even know was legal, and how apparently snowplows can’t handle 11% grades as evidenced by the road being suddenly and distinctly buried in thick white garbage, and how our captain feathered the brakes to her own chant of “Oh Fahrenheit oh Fahrenheit oh Fahrenheit oh Fahrenheit” until we made it safely to the bottom with no help whatsoever from the Lane Assist Feature.

I swear I will tell that part of the story very flatteringly, if we make it home alive AND are all still speaking to one another.

Which we do …
… at 4:15 in the morning.

The whole one-hour drive took five and a half hours. Five and a half hours. I, being the only man of the male gender still present, do the manliest thing I can think of and make everyone tea.

Plus, we be hungry after braving that squall. We deserve chicken nuggets with our tater tots. Too bad none of us wants to ever look at anything frozen ever again. Yarr.

Behind the Scenes

If I remember rightly—which I may not—some of the last words my girlfriend murmured to me before we finally fell asleep around six that morning were You’re allowed to write about this.

So I did.

But it took a while, because this is not quite the usual style here at Zach Hively and Other Mishaps.

And in case this was lost in the attempts to be lighthearted about a very not-lighthearted night: she really did keep us alive. For which I say to her: thank you. I like being alive with you, very much.