Snowblinded

It's spring. It's supposed to be getting less & less like winter. In Pennsylvania, however, that is all relative. I was driving to work - a 31 mile haul, one way, each day, five days a week - at the ungodly hour of 4:41am as the snow shower rapidly escalated into a fierce snow squall. I had several mountains to climb & the lines in the road were getting dimmer by the minute.

Finally, they disappeared alltogether & left me with just the reflector sticks along either side of the road to use as my guide to stay out of the ditches. The last mountain range was the worst. And it was here that the snow was the worst. The flakes swirled all around in front of my headlights...neither going in a straight line or falling gently down. All of this visual stimulatoin was causing me to be hypnotized as I putted along at about 20-30 mph.

The 2-lane Federal highway divides at one point at the base of the mountain range. I am concentrating on merely keeping the car as close to the right side of the road without dropping over the bank. My mind is reasoning, "Should I just pull over & wait this out?" I just could not bring myself to that yet. It's not desparate enough. I have driven all over northwest PA living there for almost 2 decades...this little snow squall shouldn't deter my quest to arrive at my job faithfully.

So I pushed myself in spite of my instincts.

My headlights shined upon the sign that said, "Keep Right"...so I kept my car to the right, thinking this would get me to the divided highway. I could only see as far as my headlights would shine. The road was all white...as was the shoulder, the grass, and all of the other surroundings. Down to only 15 mph & in 2nd gear, I crawled along, staying to the right until I spied the two "DO NOT ENTER" signs that I recognized as facing the opposite direction of the opposing lanes of the divided highway!

Thankfully, at this time of the morning, there were no tractor-trailers or cars (which so frequently travel this highway) as I did a 12-point turn around in the middle of the opposing lanes & tried to figure out where I was & how I was going to get over to the side of the divided highway (without ending up in the grass median, stuck for hours) that would take me to work without the head-on collision. After 10 minutes of feeling like a rat in a maze, I saw my way & was able to continue on spinning & sliding along at 15 mph.

When I was able to make it to the mountain's summit, the snow squall was beginning to lose some of its punch. I was able to make out the highway itself & began my coasting down the mountainside in 2nd gear...tooling along at 20 mph. A little more than 1/4 of the way down, the lines on the road began to appear again & by the time I had reached the bottom of the mountain range, I was back up to speed at 60 mph.

Nevertheless, my little time/space continuim had left me with about 35 minutes less time to get to work. But at least I did get to work.