posted 2007/02/18 at 16:24
Yesterday I made a daytrip to Cleveland for a DDR tournament Lara was co-running. I didn't actually enter any of the tournament divisions (I arrived too late to enter the first, left too early to participate in the second, and just generally hadn't been playing that well recently), but it was still nice to see Lara for the first time since I went to North Carolina last March for an ITG tournament she was co-running. (Strangely enough, when I was at a service plaza on the way to Cleveland, I ate Sbarro pizza for the first time since I was at a rest area on my way home from North Carolina.)
I almost didn't go, though, because I woke up yesterday morning to find that Toledo was in the midst of another bad snowstorm. Although the highways weren't all that icy, the roads leading to the highways were slippery as all get-out, and it didn't help that I was driving one of my parents' mini-vans instead of my Camry. (The driver's side window of my Camry doesn't roll down, and since I had to take a toll road between Toledo and Cleveland I kind of needed to roll my window down so I could access the toll booths.) To top things off, I was using the same minivan my brother-in-law has been using to get to work and back, and not only did he leave me with next to no gas in the tank, but the windshield wipers were in a horrible state, and once other cars started kicking road salt up onto my windshield it was all I could do to see out of the resulting white haze. (I ran out of wiper fluid once I got to Cleveland, too.)
As much as I wanted to see Lara again, this was certainly not a trip that I had to make, and under other circumstances I might have turned around and come home after a couple of minutes of slip-sliding down Toledo roads at a snail's pace trying to get to the highway. The reason why I made the trip anyway is that I figure that at some point in my life, there will come a time when I will have to make a long trip under those kinds of bad road conditions, and it would be better for me to practice driving in them now than to have my first experience be under more distressing circumstances. Besides, I've been a passenger in that van when idiotic drivers have plowed into it, and it's built like a tank, so if I'd had an accident on the road I would have been a lot better off in that van than if I'd been in my dinky little Camry.
It was a nerve-wracking experience at times, but I got to Cleveland and back without incident, and now I have a little more confidence when it comes to driving in wintry conditions. Toledo will finally be going back to above-freezing temperatures starting tomorrow, so the roads should be a lot better in the days ahead. Still, days like yesterday make me wonder why I haven't started applying for jobs in Florida yet.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon