I turned back instead of driving all the way to my parents' place to have dinner. It is snowing hard already and we're predicted to get 12 to 18 inches. The roads have a swirling eddy of white snakes writhing on top of them. It hasn't settled yet, at least not on the roads that have heavy traffic. But the thick dancing snow that is kicked up by each passing car will soon be a white coat. The visibility on the road is still reasonably good, but it promises to become more perilous as the wind starts to kick up.
When I turned around I hadn't been going for long before I saw the shadow of a deer up ahead in the other lane. It was a dark shadow, silhouetted in the very edge of an oncoming car's headlight range. I slowed down, worried that the approaching car wouldn't see the deer until too late, would brake too fast and slide into my lane, or spin off and cause the car behind him to careen into my lane. As I watched the deer stand motionless, I thought about the phrase "deer in the headlights." Then the deer melted into the darkness, and the car passed the spot where the deer once was, and then passed me and the moment was over.
On Wednesday night I drove home from dinner a few towns away in a smaller blizzard than this one is supposed to be. It was the most dangerous conditions I've ever been in. I inched along at thirty miles an hour and sometimes could not see the front of my car. From time to time an overconfident nutjob would pass me and leave a trail of white that made me slow down perhaps to twenty. I had no idea where I was on the highway, even when I got very close to home. I passed a Subaru Forester off the road, tilted upward at a crazy angle, hazards blinking. I was hardly past it when it was swallowed up by the white, as though it had never been there at all.
Since our country has no snow, I feel an urge to experience driving at one. Of course it's all dangerous and all that stuff but it will surely add to my resume of car driving experience.
Posted by: Air Intake Kits | January 23, 2012 at 09:04 PM