18 Hours of D.C. Blizzard Bobsledding

Ryan here. After a death-defying trip down a steep, windy, snow-covered road in the mountains of West Virginia a couple weekends ago while deer hunting with my brother (blog post pending), I decided that our car needed new tires. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy staring death in the face, then wetting my pants and praying for mercy as much as the next guy. It just seems less appealing when there's someone else in the car to witness it, that's all. So early last week I bought some new snow tires in anticipation of our winter travels.

So the Christmas travel plan was to leave school at 4 pm on Friday and drive 5 hrs to my brother, Farel's, house in West Virginia, stay the night, then drive the second 5 hrs to Erin's parent's house in Virginia the next morning. At 9 am on Friday, however, Erin called to inform me that there was a severe snowstorm warning issued for all of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, etc, starting Friday night. After considering our options, we decided to make a mad dash for Virginia asap by going east to D.C., then south to Chesapeake, VA. We knew we'd hit snow before we arrived but Erin's parents have a friend that lives just off the highway in D.C. so we figured that, worst case scenario, we could stop and stay with her until the storm blew over, then continue on to the in-law's once the roads were scraped.

A co-resident took my last patient (thanks!) so we were able to leave Columbus at 3 pm on Friday. All was well until we were just outside of D.C. and it started snowing. Then it started SNOWING. The snow started sticking quite a bit and things were getting pretty slick. Then the car in front of us started doing uncontrolled cookies. As I puzzled over the fact that I was face-to-face with the driver of the car in front of me, my brain said to me, "Ryan, if the car in front of you can do cookies on the highway, then the cars beside and behind you probably can, too. And if those cars can, then you probably can, too", which would have been sweet except that I had my wife and kids in the car with me. At that point we decided to stop for gas and re-assess our situation.

We made our way up a slippery and snow-choked off-ramp and pulled into a gas station surrounded by cars that were spinning their tires trying to get up this tiny incline in the road, i.e. the road was extremely slick and no one else had been deer hunting in West Virginia a couple weekends before. With 8 inches of snow on the ground and more falling by the minute, we decided that it might be best to stop and stay with the friend, since she lived just off an exit that was only a couple miles up the freeway. As we took the on-ramp back onto the freeway, we noticed that the off-ramp we had just taken was backed up as far as we could see, due to accidents and general slickness.

As we approached the friend's off-ramp we quickly realized that it, too, was totally choked off with accidents and had about a quarter mile of cars, trucks, and semis lined up to get off. So that limited our options to 1) keep going on the highway or 2) stop on the highway and get rear-ended by the semi behind us that can't stop in time. We chose option 1 and kept going. It was kind of weird because the highway was totally covered in snow so people were just making up their own lanes depending on where the snow seemed easiest to drive through. This resulted in a three lane highway becoming a 4-5 lane highway, with the lanes periodically merging together with no ability for anyone to slow down very well, much less stop. For several hours I was driving in a "lane" that was straddling the noise-maker strip that is normally outside the yellow line on the side of the highway. There were cars, trucks, SUV's, semis, and even a school bus that had slid off the highway and were embedded in the snow banks on the side of the road. It was sad to see people slid off the road, talking on their cell phones, and not being able to stop to help because there was nowhere to stop and your odds of getting hit if you did stop were right around 100%. So we just kept going, praying the whole while. The kids were, gratefully, asleep in their car seats almost the whole time.

With all the accidents, we were at a near stand-still from about 1:45 am until about 3:00 am. We decided at that point to pull off the highway at the nearest hotel and get some sleep, even if we'd be snowed in for a couple days because we were both exhausted. However, every off-ramp we came to looked much like the last: choked with accidents and lots of people lined up at a stand-still to get off. So we just kept going. At one point, traffic stopped so I got out and knocked the ice blocks off the windshield wipers so that they'd touch the glass and wipe away the snow again (which was an adventure all it's own). I figured I'd take advantage of being out of the car so I stood in the doorway of our car and went pee, as discretely as one can while trying not to slip on the ice or get frostbite. The snow and wind blowing into the car woke up our 2 1/2 year old, Grant, and he yelled, "Daddy! Don't go pee pee on the car door! That's a no-no!" Then he laid down his head and fell back asleep.

Eventually we avoided all the accidents and drove the last 200 miles at about 20 mph with a blizzard blowing around us. To stay awake, I was listening to the book Outliers on CD. Eventually I had to switch to Angels & Demons because Outliers got to the part in the book where it talks about terrible airplane crashes and why they happen: tired, over-worked pilots; stormy weather conditions; lack of communication in the cockpit; etc. It went into excrutiating detail about how each of these things, alone, wouldn't be enough to cause a plane to crash but all added up they were a very deadly combo. As I listened, it was like the narrator was in the back seat describing our exact conditions to me. SCARY! We drove all night and arrived at Erin's parent's house at 9 am on Saturday, 18 hours after starting our 10 hour drive. Regrettably, we didn't take any photos of our bobsled trip down the D.C./Virginia highway system. Funny enough, it didn't really occur to me at the time to do so. It's too bad. Here's a photo from the paper, though. I think this was from New Jersey but there was WAY more snow than this were we were. The article says D.C got 16 inches and that Virginia reported over 3000 car accidents on Friday and Saturday.


Things we learned from this experience:

1) Postpone a trip rather than risk driving through a major storm. Spending time with family is awesome but risking lives to make that happen is not wise.

2) Don't be too upset when things don't go as planned. I was mad and scared when my car was sliding all over that West Virginia hillside but that annoying, eye opening experience potentially saved that lives of me and/or my family b/c it helped me see that I needed new tires for the car. I am positive that we would not have made it safely if we had driven with the old tires on. In other words, realize that some of life's greatest blessings come cleverly disguised as annoying inconveniences or even as terrible tragedies.

3) Always keep food, water, and blankets in your car or truck. I heard later that some of those people were stranded in their cars for 13 hours or more.

4) Don't go pee pee on the car door. That's a no-no!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you all and please travel safely!!!