The Aerie
As the car rotated gently across three lanes of Highway 77, the only thought going through my head was "Oh no, not again."
(By the way, if you look to the right you will see that the artwork has finally been added for my two books at Amazon) ----->>
It was snowing on Monday night when my wife and I left an appointment in Eagan in my 2000 Plymouth Neon. I had previously described the roads as being "like driving on butter," and the situation had only gotten worse in the subsequent hour.
Still, I was careless. We were debating the merits of the Cut-and-Dried video game limitation approach to the Complicated Coupon system as I drove down the entrance ramp onto northbound Highway 77. I was aware of three cars passing us down below on the freeway and one car behind us on the ramp, when I felt the left front wheel go off the road.
It was just a little off the road. The snow had obscured the entrance ramp so that the end of the pavement blended almost invisibly into the gravel, and the left front tire grabbed just a bit of the dirt.
It was enough.
As we reached the end of the ramp I felt the wheels come loose, and the car began to rotate widdershins onto the freeway, continuing its entrance-ramp trajectory in a long diagonal.
I was reminded when this happened of a similar feeling twenty-five years ago. My friends Todd and the late-lamented Steve were with me in my Ford Galaxie 500, a car so large that three men could sit in the front seat without any kind of gay vibe being triggered - which it turned out was a good thing since unbeknownst to all three of us, Todd was gay.
These were in the days before it was okay to be gay: just a few weeks previously I had been lying on someone's living room floor when I found an earring-back in the pile. "Someone's girlfriend lost an earring," I said, handing it to him.
"Oh," he said, "That's Jim's."
I was appalled. His roommate Jim had pierced ears? Was Jim gay? Was my friend gay? The horrors!
You see, back when I was a lad, we all wore onions on our belts, that being the fashion at the time. But men did not have earrings. The only exception was pirates, pirates had earrings. And only Marines had tattoos. That was it. In my day, women wore earrings, and maybe really tough men had tattoos, and everybody else contented themselves with glasses and wristwatches. This modern world we're in now seems as if some tribe of tattooed Pacific Islanders with plates in their lips snuck in during the night and replaced the original population.
I've been waiting for ritual scarring to become the next fashion trend - and I've actually seen it in places - but I'm starting to suspect that what will happen next is that Steve Jobs will come out with an IPod that you carry as a plate in your lip, and everyone will have them. Jessica Simpson will be quoted saying, "Ob yah, beforb de LibpPodb I habd tob cbarrby mby IPBodb ib by HANB!"
Anyway none of us knew Todd was gay that morning in St. Paul as the Galaxie 500 rounded a curve on the I-94 freeway in St. Paul and I felt the wheels break loose from the pavement. One minute the steering wheel was responsive, and the next it turned as if nothing was attached to it.
"Did you guys feel that?" I asked, and then we all noticed the car drifting, widdershins again.
And that was only one of several times I've felt that sensation. Once it was on the Highway 280 exit ramp to terminal road - up the ramp, and swing to the right, except this time when the 'swing' part came up, nothing happened. The car kept going forward, right into the curb where the rim got bent - but held the bead long enough for me to get home before the tire went flat. And then there was the time with Steve in my rear-wheel drive Mazda RX 7 when I discovered that my car had a passing gear, and the rear wheels passed the front wheels.
Then there was the time going down the hill in St. Paul when the brakes just laughed and said "No way," and I ended up stopping the car by flattening a stop sign.
So as the wife and I drifted gently across Highway 77, my only thought was "Oh no, not again."
I did have the presence of mind to think that I ought to try to "steer into the skid," but this time I discovered something interesting. When you're in a gently rotating car on a snowy dark night sliding diagonally across a freeway, it can actually be rather difficult to determine exactly what direction you are going in, to say nothing of trying to figure out which way the wheels are pointing at any given time.
Before I could resolve this question we had rotated almost 180 degrees, and slid with a soft crunch off the left shoulder.
Now, it's clear by the fact that I went sliding across the freeway that I was not driving according to road conditions. Nevertheless, I was heartened that we were going slowly enough that we did not slide all the way into the ditch. The front wheels were still on the gravel and the back end was in the short grass when the car stopped. All that was necessary to resume driving was to wait for the traffic to pass, put the car in first gear, and gently pull back onto the freeway.
"So anyway," I said, picking up the threads of the conversation as we reached a sedate 25 MPH, "I still think that we should..."
"I don't want to talk about this!" my wife exclaimed, astonished, "We could have died!"
"What? That?" I snorted, "That was nothing."
"But there could have been traffic coming, someone could have run into us!" she protested. "When we get home, call your friend Al the lawyer and tell him we want to write up a will!"
For some reason, sliding across northbound Highway 77 while facing south seemed to have upset my wife considerably. I clamped my lips on any further retorts, realizing that she had to deal with our little incident her own way. Somehow "Oh no, not again" didn't seem like it was going to cut it for her.
Maybe 'cause she's a girl, or maybe because, as a better driver, she had spent less time spinning into ditches...
Posted by Albatross at January 17, 2006 12:22 PM | TrackBack