It must have been 1988. It was winter and it had snowed big time... as it will in Northern Illinois. I was heading for home; westbound, in full daylight as I recall. Driving west on 120 this was before they reconstructed the entire roadway intersection area at 120 and highway 12. Driving up into the residential area of the small burg I was totally unsuspecting of what was about to happen.
All of a sudden I was moving westward, but facing due north. I relaxed my grip on the steering wheel, because you can't control a sliding vehicle anyway. I also took both feet away from the pedals... can't stop a slide, and accelerating would be foolish. This all occurred in a matter of a few seconds, as the car spun around until it was facing due south. "Well shit," I thought as the vehicle began another spin to face north, and a ditch... The car moved toward the ditch, and I had mere seconds to plan what to do next... As the vehicle slowly slid into the ditch I prepared myself, and when she hesitated in the ditch I touched the accelerator, gently at first, then a bit harder as the vehicle cooperated and there it went, right up, out of the ditch, and onto the side road. If it was in a movie it could not have happened more perfectly... I just wish someone had been there to film it.
It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilerating!
Yes I am a daredevil on snowy, slick roads... also a very instinctual driver...
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Fast forward too many years:
Thursday evening 12/08/2022
It's supposed to rain and snow over night. I have
been considering routes to work that don't include the cloverleaf interchanges...I
am thinking it's best to avoid totally obvious dangerous slanting curves.
I can get on the tollroad near home, via a straight
ramp, for 55 cent toll. At the other end I can exit the freeway at Alpine,
where the ramp is fairly straight,....but from there to the plant I don't like
the options much.
This time I will play it by ear and decide when I get
down there... I will need to leave about 10 minutes early - just in case I
decide to get off at Alpine (probably 4 miles from the plant) - and also
because of all of the drivers who are petrified over a little snow.
You see, where I live the nearest highway entrance is
part of the I-90/I-39 tollroad. Then a few miles south I follow I-39 which is
also bypass US20, and that's a freeway.
Normally, if I leave the house at the right
time, I take surface streets down maybe 5 miles, and the just get on the
freeway (and the reverse of that coming home)... The idea is to avoid the tolls
as much as possible and only using the tollroad when surface streets are bad.
They work hard at keeping the tollroad plowed.
The other reason I avoid the tollroad is that I drive like a crazy person when I can go FAST. If you've ever been my passenger you know that I feel the need for speed. (Come to think about it there are very few people left in this world who have ever been a passenger with me driving. But that's through no fault of mine.)
[Aside: Well crap, I should have written a blog instead
– because this was originally part of a dialog in facebook.]
I guess I am getting up at the first alarm in the
morning, and leaving for work plenty early...
TGIF?
Aside: I am not aware that I have never experienced black ice. I don't believe it's a real thing. I usually tell myself that I'll believe in black ice when I experience it, probably seconds before I die in the wreck 😉. My last thought will be: wow, black ice really does exist.😏❄️
..
Friday morning 6:40am
So this morning’s weather is a steady rain. But it's
34F and any time it's below 37F black ice is a possibility (as I understand
it). So I am still going to leave for work a bit early.
Friday morning 7:30am
I have not looked outside, but it sounds like an awful storm... windy, raining hard and steady.
Left the house 10 minutes early. Didn't get on the
tollroad, because it's rain, and the road wasn't bad. Surface streets the usual
route, until I got on Harrison St, where I would have gotten on the freeway.
There were tow trucks and police on the overpass, and a snow plow blocking the
entrance ramp. So I got in the left lane and that’s when that snow plow on the
ramp came into view.
Something happened with a smallish enclosed trailer.
Looks like maybe just a spin out, or jackknifed… from my vantage point below.
At first I thought surface streets the rest of the way, but then I realized that if I made a u-turn I could get on the freeway westbound. Then: freeway to work, and 10 minutes early. Not bad. Even the cloverleaf ramp was not bad, no slick spots that I could detect.
Friday evening
Road surfaces are wet, but not bad. But when I got
closer to home this evening there was an accident blocking the street.
It was one of those "going too fast on Riverside,
and not paying attention" people in a big SUV, who ran into a car, and hit
HARD. There were a lot of cops, no
ambulances, and no sirens. I am thinking that no one was injured....the front
the SUV was smashed, and the passenger side of the car was smashed. The cops
were directing traffic, which was majorly hosed up on Riverside itself, but not
too bad on Bell School Road, though no one was going to cross the intersection
northbound – the direction I am traveling.
I had to turn left onto Riverside and then right on a
side street to continue my journey home. It was good, only a couple of extra
minutes - could have been worse.
Thus was our early December winter weather non-event.
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