The first big adventure of the new year was gathering a bunch of people and heading west for a ski trip to Colorado! The participants were my roommates, their girlfriends, my brother, and a college buddy recently back from Iraq who joined us at the last minute on a spur of the moment decision (the best kind when it comes to road trips!) We fit all eight of us and gear in my parents suburban with a rather tight fit and headed out into a snowstorm in Minneapolis that quickly morphed into a treacherous ice storm in southern MN and most of IA.
Speeds in the 30s were common for the first 250 miles out of Minneapolis, however we did manage to avoid going in the ditch. 35 cars and two semis in one 30 mile stretch in Northern IA were not so lucky. About half of those were rollovers as well, some with the tires still spinning and lights on. We saw one law enforcement official in that entire stretch, with a pulled over vehicle, never a bad time to get some more fines in apparently.
Two vehicles would spin out right in front of us. The first was in front of a semi in the right lane while I was about 500 ft back in the left lane on snow pack, I heard a thunk and noticed headlights facing me in my lane, I quickly switched lanes and slowed to the semi’s pace. There was hardly even time to elevate my heart rate it happened so fast. The second was watched start to finish and did produce a scare. A Subaru got on the freeway in front of us and apparently gave it to much juice coming off the on ramp and began to fishtail, I immediately tried the brakes and found them completely ineffective on the snow covered ice. I got off the brakes and made mental plans to steer around them if they didn’t make it out of my way. They spun around a couple times in front of us while the entire crew watched and then finally slipped into the median, safely out of our way. I drove on, heart racing at a rate that would only be matched two more times on the trip. I think most of the passengers were (blissfully) unaware that if the vehicle had come to rest directly in front of us stopping would not have been an option!
I switched off to Blake somewhere around Omaha and tried to catch some shut-eye, my nerves completely shot from 400 miles of driving in which ~300 of them had been on snow, ice, or both. I would get the wheel back shortly before Colorado and retain it for the remainder of the trip out. After stopping at a Denny’s in Denver, we headed up the pass on I-70. But that is a story for another post.
Photo Credits
- Ben Larson
- David Larson
- Blake Kellar
