Driving Into the Mouth of the Storm

Normally looking at a forecast like we were facing, we would just stay home. But my MIL was waiting for her third and final flight to our local Urban Jungle and all the online tracking sites were saying it was still on time, so we really had no choice. We hopped in the car and drove towards the Urban Jungle.

My wife really wanted to stop at the zoo there with our youngest. (Oldest was on spring break. More about that later.) I had been to that particular zoo hundreds of times during the years of my wife's residency with our oldest, it was cold outside and was forecasted to start blowing snow at any minute, so I just dropped them off and drove a quarter mile down the road to a fast food joint where I could read in a warm environment for an hour. I returned to pick them up when they were cold and frozen and we drove downtown.

The snow was really coming down and already the streets were starting to get slick but we made it to a favorite of ours that we hadn't eaten at since my wife's residency years. Despite the sign showing it was open during that particular time of the day, it was closed. Since we had already paid for our parking spot, we ate next door at a conveniently open Mediterranean place. By the time we left there, the snow had really added up. Our AWD vehicle was still able to move but and stops were a matter of how far you wanted to slide. All lane markings were covered so although I knew most streets we were traveling had multiple lanes, everyone was just driving down the middle of them all in single file and I followed suit, leaving plenty of distance between me and the person in front.

We headed towards the airport but since we still had a few hours to kill, ducked into an art museum. As soon as we got in there, the security guards were fretting about the weather so it wasn't much of a surprise when 15 minutes later they announced that the museum was closing. I guess they were worried about getting home. With no real option and no desire to travel any more on the roads unless we had too, we slipped and slid the rest of the way to the airport and sat out in the parking lot napping for a couple hours.

By them, my MIL's plane was halfway on the last leg of her journey when the phone rang with her number on the caller ID. Uh oh. This can't be good. It turned out she had missed her flight and was booked on the next flight, five hours later, the last flight of the evening.

Not optimistic that it would even happen and definitely not wanting to drive the 100+ miles home in this weather, which was still heavily snowing, we found a motel room a couple miles from the airport and slid and spun our tires there. We napped, ordered Chinese food delivered (and they agreed to deliver it in this weather) and bided our time. Finally the flight took off according to the app and no word from the MIL so 15 minutes before landing, we headed back to the airport. Although it was still snowing, it was much lighter. Since it was now late at night, there was little traffic and the snowplows had caught up a bit so the roads were in much better condition. Sill treacherous but drivable if one went slow and left plenty of room for stopping.  We got to the airport just as she landed and soon were on our way back to the motel.

We had no extra clothes or anything but we made do. The next morning, the roads were cleared to where we could make a speed limit trip home once we got away from the Urban Jungle. I was glad to be home again. I wished we hadn't had to tempt fate by driving in those conditions but our die had been cast and we had no choice. This time we survived the odds.