After many many hours at work I can finally find time for a proper update.
( Work Stuff )
After the end of my Friday at 2am on Saturday morning we decided there was no way we were getting out early on Saturday. That meant leaving at 2pm-ish for Mom and Dad’s.
I drove down to Mason City Iowa. It was terribly windy, and the gas mileage wasn’t great, and there was a winter advisory warning on a sign going into Iowa. So, I talked to the gas-station attendant and he said that going south things were looking better than they were in Mason City.
An hour or so later, after we decided it would be OK for Lauren to drive, we found out he had lied (probably inadvertently).
I was sleeping on and off as the wind got even worse, and started drifting the snow across the highway. Then the snow started coming down, and marred the visibility so we couldn’t tell what was drifting and what was falling.
About the time the snow really was starting to cover the road completely, I was just waking up again, and some jackass pulled out in front of us way too close, and started fishtailing as they couldn’t pick which lane to be in. Lauren tried to change lanes, at least twice, in an effort to avoid this stupid person, and in doing so our car started fishtailing. I grabbed the wheel and started steering against the fishtailing, and then as it got to going almost to 90 degrees I turned into the spin to try and get my traction back, and we did a 270 degree spin and went ass-end into the ditch.
Fortunately our power train wheels were on the shoulder, and we were only about a 3rd of the back end down into the ditch. With the help of the plow-man’s sand under the front tires, and our combined pushing, Lauren was able to drive the car out of the ditch. Then I drove for a while.
Let it be known, I drive fast relative to everyone else during abnormal driving conditions. Most of the time, this serves me very well.
This time, with a 40+ mph cross wind, it didn’t serve me so great after 2 hours. I was able to maintain a speed above 50 mph despite my perceiving the average speed to be 35 to 45ish. Most of the time I was able to go 60 to 75 when not passing someone. Going into Cedar Rapids, being on the outside of a curve which was going against the wind, I lost control of the car, and went nose-first into the median ditch. With the help of some kind people we were able to back the car out again.
When we hit Iowa City we had a great debate about whether we should go on. The weather was getting steadily worse while we were eating and having this discussion, until I couldn’t see going on even if we tried to move into Illinois to avoid the snowfall, which was only 2 more hours driving tops. So, we got a hotel, and watched the wind whip through the streets.
In the morning, up and off again. About 1pm, blown in the ditch again. This time, while driving much slower, and trying to be considerably more careful. We came over a ridge, the tree-line stopped, and a drift blowing over there, and there was a curve again against the wind. So the wind caught us just as the road went from dry to icy, and literally blew us right off the road.
This time we required a tow truck to get out.
I finished the stretch to Hannibal MO, about another 20 minutes. We ate lunch, and the roads were clear the rest of the way to O’Fallon. The rest of the trip went without incident.
The parents-in-law spent that day fighting re-directed flights, delayed flights, and canceled flights. The ended up arriving the next day in the early afternoon.
We read a story at the Christmas Eve service my Dad was in charge of, watched the Simpson’s movie with my brother Aaron, and went to sleep.
Christmas came, we ate some, and started unwrapping presents. I had a wonderful set of good things. The big highlights for friends to know are:
Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii
Mario Galaxy
Walter Payton Jersey,
Another copy of “Lamb: the Gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal”
Payton’s biography,
two more seasons of scrubs between Lauren and I,
and quite a few other good books.
Guitar Hero is a hit around the house. All the parents have played it some, and almost all the brothers and sisters have played as well.
So, all-in-all this has been a pretty wild ride for a while now with a lot of crazy ups and downs, and it looks like the year is ending on a great note, with much promise for the new year.
I hope to get back to some of my writing about the Church and Technology in the near future, and I have some big ideas I want to take the wraps off of sometime in ‘08, which some of you might be interested in.
