Incoherent Scribblings

An Adventure in the Snow

The storm started yesterday with wind. While I lay in bed under the cozy comforter eating chocolate and reading a book, the shutters rattled, and every once in a while the wind would whistle. I suspected it had been snowing, so when A. announced around 11 pm that he wanted to go for a drive I was less than impressed. After being accused of having no sense of adventure, I relented. I got bundled up and out we went.

First we went outside the apartment building where we stepped into about 3″ of fresh fluffy snow. As we looked down the slightly driven-on, but not yet plowed Main Street I asked if he had seen enough… I certainly had! But no… He still wanted to go out for a drive!

We slowly drove down Main Street and finally came to the place where it turns into a country road. I could see from the beam of the headlights that not only had the road not been plowed, it had barely been driven on. There was only one path through the snow and the ruts indicated that the snow had drifted and was at least 6″ deep. A group of kids shouted out that we probably didn’t want to go any further… a couple of cars had already gotten stuck. My sentiments exactly! At that point, I was definitely ready to go home; sense of adventure be damned!

At the edge of town the wind had picked up considerably and the snow was blowing horizontally. We weren’t yet on the country road, so the snow wasn’t as deep as it was only a few feet in front of us, but it was quickly drifting and getting deeper. I started thinking of my life in the Midwest and the countless cars I had helped push out of snow drifts and the few that I myself had been stuck in. A. was standing outside “enjoying” the snow and as he opened the door to coax me out I said, “You know, we have a word for this in Iowa… Blizzard!” and slammed the car door.

He got back into the car and tried to make a U-turn so we could go home, but… you guessed it… the tires just spun! As I sat in the car thinking over and over again, “I told you so!” he got out and scooped the snow away from the rear tires (because of course, BMWs are rear-wheel drive) and managed to get us turned about 90 degrees. After a few minutes of more tire spinning, my patience wore thin and I realized that I was going to have dig us out. As I kicked the snow out from under the tires and the under-carriage, he kept spinning the tires, and finally we got free. I jumped into the car and we were on our way home.

Our “adventure” only lasted about 30 minutes, but I have definitely had enough adventure to last me the rest of the winter!