🎵Prompt Response: Worst Icy Travel Woes 🥶🧊
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What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?
Ice = Slide = Crash
Yes, I think a car accident qualifies as a terrible travel experience even if it doesn’t end in severe injury or death. As usual, I have lemonade moments I’ve been able to gather from it, but there’s so much more to the story.
Indiana, March, 1991…
I told the story of when I first met my husband after a 3-day journey from Arizona to Kentucky. My company, Parkway Studios, arranged a couple job sites for me where I’d be close to Kentucky. One of them was in Knox, Indiana.
Once we knew the location, David got a room in the same motel across the parking lot, and we spent time together before and after my work days. It was at a Pizza Hut during lunch that he picked out a date in April and told me we’d get married then. I think he already knew I would say, “yes,” so it really was just about setting a date. I liked that the man knew what he wanted, that he liked the number 7 like I did, and that it was on Sunday. But it was only a month away, so we had some quick planning to do. Being a Sunday in April actually helped, though.
A Precarious Drive
Just before my new week started, I needed to take him back to Louisville and then drive back to Knox the next morning. It started a blinding snow on the trip to Kentucky, so I had him drive, but I was really scared. I was raised out west, so driving in snow was a whole different—and scary—experience for me. I was praying silently, and he started praying out loud. The good thing about that was it let me know my marriage plans were the right decision because his prayer showed me he was a godly and Holy-Spirit-Filled man. And about halfway back, the snow was almost completely stopped.
The next morning, I put on a pink sweatsuit a work friend had gotten me for Christmas. She knew I didn’t wear pants, but she said she wanted me to have something warm for under my skirts during the icy weather we’d been working in. It turned out to be both a good and bad decision to wear just the sweats for driving. I had not considered that the snow from the night before would keep getting deeper in Knox even if I was no longer seeing it in Louisville. See, not raised in that stuff.
Ice!
But it was worse! In the middle of the night, the snow had turned into a terrible ice storm. And driving on ice was even more unfamiliar to me than driving in snow. Yikes! 😬
So remember, this was 1991. Only rich people had phones in their cars, and that was not me. By the time I got to Kokomo, traffic was at a dead stop because of a major road where a power line hung precariously over metal railroad tracks that crossed the road. I watched many car doors open to hide people who just had to “go” and hoped I wouldn’t be one of them because I didn’t have a passenger to hold up a jacket or anything for privacy. The stand-still lasted 4 hours, and I had no way to go anywhere or call anyone, including my company who may have wondered why I was not in the room to show pictures. Though it turned out the whole town was shut down, so viewing pictures was not on anyone’s list of important things to do, and I don’t think there was any power to light or heat the room anyway. But I didn’t know that then.
Moving Along
When I finally got moving, I went a couple miles and found a phone to call Parkway. I don’t recall if I found a place with food or a bathroom because the next events were so traumatic that much of my memory of those two days has completely faded into the background.
As I headed toward Knox, the road kept getting slipperier and slipperier. A little slide here and there had me rehearsing words from my Uncle Bob about turning into the skid. There was a large vehicle in front of me that dug deep ruts in the snow, so I just tried to keep my wheels inside those ruts, and it was working—until that vehicle turned down a different road.
And Then it Happened
Very shortly after the truck turned off, I was left to maneuver on snow with a layer of ice over the top of it. I got to a bridge (and didn’t know that bridges freeze faster and deeper than regular roads) and almost immediately began sliding. I turned the wheel and lightly pumped the brakes, but nothing stopped my back door from hitting the guardrail so hard that the window glass was in the front of my hair. That hit bounced me across the road where I was heading for another guardrail, and I could see the icy creek over the side of it. I was scared I’d hit the rail and be tossed upside-down into the creek. I cried out to God to save me, and the car suddenly turned so that the side of it hit the rail and bounced me back to the other side of the road and beyond the bridge. I gave it gas and drove myself into the snow bank to get off the road in case any other cars came sliding along, and then I just sat there with my heart and thoughts racing.
The car behind me witnessed the whole thing and carefully got past me to pull off the road in front of me. He walked up to my window to see if I was okay and was genuinely surprised that I was mostly unharmed. He was in a nice car that apparently had a phone in it and said his wife was calling a tow truck for me, but there were a lot of accidents, so he didn’t know how long I’d have to wait. But I was safe in the car, and warm in my sweats and jacket, so I just waited. I hated watching the other car drive away, but what else could they have done?
The Parts That Made it the Worst Experience
After telling me my car was likely totaled and towing me into town, the driver took me to a hotel where I could use a phone to contact Parkway, and David, and my insurance company. But the phone lines were mostly out or hit and miss because of the ice storm. I didn’t want to call any churches in the area because I was afraid they’d tell me the accident was my fault for wearing pants. (There’s a long story about a manipulative church that got me to that point, but that’s for another post.)
Alone!
So at least I was safe and unhurt, but I had no other clean clothes since most of my stuff was in the hotel at Knox, no voices of comfort with so many downed phone lines, and no transportation since my car was towed away. I’m not sure if there was any place to eat within walking distance, but I vaguely recall a handful of snacks from a machine at the hotel. And I don’t even think the TV was working. I had never felt so alone, and to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that alone again. I remember thinking that it was the closest thing I could imagine to what Hell must feel like.
Hope…
By the next morning, I was able to make a phone call to David and to the insurance office. The agent came and picked me up and let me make any other necessary calls from his office since I had a long distance plan with Sprint that allowed me to dial a toll-free number to route my calls through to get their billing instead of hotel rates. Eventually, I was able to get a loaner car through the select coverage for that on my insurance plan. And I got back to the hotel at Knox to either finish showing pictures or call the customers to reschedule after the ice storm. I headed back to Louisville to spend a few days shopping for a wedding dress and being very glad to not be in that ice storm any longer. Apparently, it was one of their worst and lasted up to six weeks in some areas of the county.
“[5] God is within her; she will not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns.”
Lemonade
Besides being unhurt, I got a very understanding insurance adjuster who agreed not to total my car since I was still making payments. Totaling would have paid it off but left me with nothing for a down payment to get a replacement. Plus, I loved my little red Sentra. The two doors on the right side never really worked right again because of the damage to the part between the doors, but it got us all the way back out to Arizona for our honeymoon and so David could meet my family. I think I drove it at least 5-7 years after the accident, so it hung in there well. And unless that event was the reason I later needed neck surgery for a slipped disk, it was pretty amazing that I walked away without much more than glass in the front of my hair. Still, that’s not a trip I ever want to repeat.
And I’ll add a nice fitting song you may not have heard in a while,..
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