Winter
had already announced itself prematurely, at Cincinnati. That meant, regularly
monitoring the weather and estimating the level of mental preparedness. The
Friday after Thanksgiving week had severe snowfall predictions.
By
Thursday it was known that the ‘cloud with snowflakes’ symbol on the weather
app was in fact an imminent snowstorm by the name of Cleon. Alerts had been issued across our county and the training
class I was attending for work had also warned us of the inclement weather. We
were instructed to use our judgment before leaving for work. As it turned out,
on the D-day, all schools were closed, but big businesses? –No! So I used my
judgment on whether I should venture out into the icy rains or not. The only
issue was that my 2 month good-weather driving experience and my 2-day vacation
availability had impaired my judgment skills, and hence the verdict – “I shall
go anyway”!
The
onward journey was supposed to be the risky one with icy road conditions, but
it turned out to be rather smooth. So it was time to attend some lectures.
While I agonizingly waited for the session to end, the weather updates kept
creeping up. There was a delay in the conception of the storm but it arrived
nonetheless. I caught a peek of some hefty accumulation outside, but was also
told by an instructor that the interstates were running just fine. Weather.com however, begged to differ
and had already changed the alert into an emergency. I was going to find out
why, in a few minutes.
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| All for this? |
I
packed my bag, collected the goodies & foodstuff “earned” from the 5-day
session and headed out – only to find accumulation in plural multiple of an
inch, throughout the parking lot and also on my car. So I had some brushing off
to do before I could start. With
only 2 months of driving behind me, I thought the main roads would be salted
down a
priori and ploughed off posteriori.
But I would soon find out that the parking lot was probably the easiest stretch
of this journey. The intensity of the precipitation was quite heavy, reducing
the visibility to a significant degree, and the winds and motion of the car only
aggravated the problem. I was further visually impaired thanks to my wiper
which had some ice on it, making it only 20% effective and thereby leaving only
a parabolic slot of clarity on my windshield. It was impossible to see the lane
demarcations. The fear factor had started to creep in and I contemplated the
prospect of staying back in a nearby hotel. Within minutes this prospect had paved
its way into retrospect as I just drove along. Anyway, I wanted to get back to
the warmth of my home and company of my friends on this Friday evening.
 |
| Challenge Accepted |
After
15 minutes of slow moving traffic on the suburb, I approached the Interstate no.
75, the prominence of which made me believe that it should be in normal state.
But I was proven wrong again. It was slushy and icy all over. I kept recalling
all the advice I had received about driving slowly, not ramming on the breaks
and steering into the skid. I decided to keep to the rightmost lane in order to
drive merrily at my tortoise-pace. It didn’t seem bad – a much rougher drive
than usual, but my Mazda was supposed
to have an anti-skid feature which gave me some reassurance. So I started
counting down the 15 odd miles I had on the freeway while following the tire
marks of the vehicles preceding me. But as I cruised along, something did not
seem right. Traffic seemed lighter and the lights seemed dimmer too. The next
thing I saw was a board stating that I was on the exit lane to the I-74. Now a
subtraction by one should not be an issue technically, except that this
interstate was heading towards Indianapolis. My eyes had widened and I let out a
shout – “What have I done!” I had taken a ‘Wrong Turn’. The movie series by
that name had spooky cannibals in the woods. The haunt factor here was in the
form of car wreckages lying in the roadside woods. I saw at least 5 of them
within a mile. The eerie sight of abandoned city buses and shuttles lying on
the curb with the words – “Out of Order” flashing across their route-boards, almost
felt like losing a near and dear one, considering I used to be a frequent rider
not too long ago.
To
summarize, I had veered onto a path filled with fresh vehicle carcasses and was
ever so gently headed towards Indiana. I turned off the radio first. The notion of Rihanna being friends with a monster would least help me calm down in this scenario. It was time to whip out a piece of
technology, I always take pride in not utilizing – The GPS. As per
instructions, I took the next exit and was told that I will be back on track,
through an entrance ramp, within 2 minutes. But despite being neighbors on my
phone, the weather.com app refused to communicate to Mr. G. Maps, that the exit
ramps would basically be reduced to a white sheet. But Mr. Maps wasn’t going to
abandon me. It asked me to take a U-turn and take another ramp on the other
side. After struggling with the snail-paced traffic, most of whom seemed lost
like me, I saw the board for the ramp. But hello! A flashing police car parked
across the entrance was not supposed to be a regular feature.
So,
this one had been shut down too. I took another U-turn with no luck. I was
stuck in an infinite loop and Mr. Maps’ intelligence was proving to be seriously
artificial. Whatever calmness I had garnered, began to reshape into panic. I
steered my car along with one hand while I gnawed into the index finger of the
other, pondering what in the world I was supposed to do next. I had gained a
reputation for being skillful when it came to geographical navigation. But to
activate those abilities, I needed to switch off the anxiety mode. And this is
when I reverted back to my first love- a mention of which is inevitable. I
recalled Dhoni’s cool headedness and
tried to induce a level of nonchalance. I managed to chalk out a path which
should have technically led me back to the interstate. I decided to follow my
instincts. I could clearly see that the accumulations had increased in the last
few minutes and I did see a couple of cars ahead of me on the verge of
skidding. I tried my best to emulate a train and stick to the tracks of the Honda
Accord I was tailgating and drove into a residential area which led into a
pitch dark forest area. Finally, I saw some trucks flying across, on a bridge
ahead. It had to be the I-75, and it was.
Wiping
off the subtle smile of relief off my face was proving to be as difficult as
driving with trucks racing past me on the fast lane. When the going gets tough,
the tough get going. These mighty beasts, which are forced to stick to the
rightmost lane on normal days, took it all out on me by derisively splashing
off blasts of sleet on my windscreen. I tried to keep my composure by reminding
myself about this journey being far from complete.
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| On the verge of a tempo-maneuver |
After reaching
my exit, I was rather apprehensive about the next stretch of road leading to
the Clifton area, where I lived. Cincinnati is known as the city of seven hills
and Clifton happens to be one of them. So the prospect of enjoying my comforter
was literally an ‘uphill’ task – whatever route I chose. I still made it
through to within a mile of my apartment and the smile starting to transition
into a grin. But that is not how life works right? It was probably the last upslope
of the route and there was a jam. I figured the traffic must be slow and hence
there must be a back-up at the subsequent lights. But Hang on! There was no oncoming traffic. The vehicles
ahead of me took advantage of this chance and treaded across lanes to move
ahead. It was hard for me to believe this. The last time I saw such blatant
overtaking on prohibited lanes was back home in Kanpur where tempos would
convert the 2-laned GT road into an 8-lane ‘un-freeway’. The reason for the jam
was to be clear soon. Three cars with their flashers on were just parked on the
middle of the road, pointing at random directions. I had only heard of such a
situation during the only storm last year. Very soon, I would also become one
of those randomly oriented stagnant 4-wheeled box of iron. The only outcome of
the fuel injection caused by my desperate pumping of the gas pedal was energy
in the form of noise, instead of motion. The number of solutions popping up in
my head for this precipice I had got myself into was equal to the coefficient
of friction available to my wheels. I saw people get out of their cars and
push. But I did not have the luxury of human assistance and boy, did I miss
India at that moment. All you had to say was – “Bhaiya thoda dhakka de denge?”, and you would have 5-10 Bhaiyas selflessly helping you out. That
vivid vision of my homeland faded off; as I saw the snowflakes continue their
relentless attack on me.
I gathered some
audacity and stepped out of my car. I quickly learnt that the ice-scraper was
useless on asphalt roads. Back inside, the only other gear on my car was the
reverse and I figured, what the hell, let’s give it a shot! Interestingly the
car went back but not forward. Electronic devices have this funny property
wherein slapping a radio box tunes it out of the blue. I slapped on the
accelerator and well, my car skid! It skid bad. I froze, not in the outdoor
subzero temperature, but with fear. Luckily enough though, I skid back on track
and within moments I was rolling, and rolling the way the engineers had
designed this vehicle to roll. Thankfully, this one did turn out to be the
final bottleneck of this expedition. I performed the most painstakingly
cautious parking of my life. As I walked back, I made the mistake of
prematurely smiling again, when I forgot about my boot needing traction as well,
and just dodged a bad slip. Anyway I made it to my doorstep, in one piece.
That’s what mattered.
.JPG) |
| Challenge Accomplished |
While there are
breathing souls on this planet who have lived to narrate their tales of a near
death experience while climbing Mt. Everest, I have to settle for this one. At
least for the time being! But winter has just begun and this “adventure” could
well become a recurring event on my calendar. Gee! I do hope not.
