Darkneuro's House of Musings

Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip sliding away

1/8/2010

I would like to point out that in the above picture, there is indeed snow. There is also, sadly, an absence of either Sic-un's bike or my car.
This is due to the fact that there is indeed snow that does appear to be sticking about a bit more than it usually does. It is also due to the fact that there is about 1 inch of solid ice under what little snow there is....on the road.

Let me explain: It started snowing while we were both at work. It wasn't so bad when Sic-un left work at his lunch to go pay our rent. It got somewhat bad while he was out (he dropped the bike. Minor injuries: One mirror is broken and his back is potentially pulled again), but he made it back to work to finish out his shift ok. Me? I don't leave at lunch. I have 1/2 an hour. He has a full hour. It makes a difference when you have to drive 10 minutes (traffic) to get a burger, you know?

I followed him from work at a very slow rate of speed, he on the bike, me in my car. Roadway through office park to major street? Snowpacked and icy. We're lucky we don't have to go the other way out of the office park: There were reportedly between 5 and 10 accidents the other way out of the office park. There were no accidents, nobody stranded, no issues when you left our way. So we were lucky there.
We got to the main road. The majority was just wet, with a strange... well, I like to think of it as 'ice potential', where the water doesn't move the way it should because it is so cold, and it's thick and sluggish and will cause you to slip and slide if you're not careful. We managed to do about 30 all the way down the main road. Then we get to West Outer. It's slushy on the off-sides of the curves, and there's again the potential for ice that makes me damn glad I'm getting home now instead of later, but for the most part it's just wet.
Then we get to the side road that leads to our street.
It's up a short hill, then down a long hill, and when you're about 1/2 way down the hill (before it continues its hillness around the curve), you need to turn onto our street.
Inch thick ice up the hill and down, starting about 2 feet after you leave WestOuter.
Silly me took the light dusting of blown snow to be actual un-driven snow on the ice instead of just ice. Then I noticed that Sic-un had his feet down, his front wheel was pointed towards the left and he was going to the right. He pulled towards the right. I tried to avoid him and then the Good Samaritans who were waving their hands madly to tell us "Don't come this way"....
Thanks for the warning when I'm now started down the hill, guys....
I was in 2nd gear, not first.
I tapped my brakes (yes, I'm a dumb cunt).
I slid. Of course I slid. I know better, but I slid anyway. I proceeded to PUMP my brakes, turn into the skid, drop to first, regained very slight control and came to a stop in the middle of the roadway, at an angle, right in front of the guys waving madly at me. They were stuck, in a truck-type vehicle, parked and with flashers in the gutter area, about 7 feet in front of my front bumper, right in the curve that would have allowed me to slip down to the other side and find purchase.

So. Sic-un, getting assistance from the Good Samaritans in stopping his skid, getting to the side of the roadway and getting parked, was safe.
I was safe.
My car? Not Safe. Seriously NOT SAFE.
Middle of the roadway, 2 way (usually) busy-ish road, at an angle, lights on, flashers on, RUNNING, PARKED in the middle of the road.
How many fucknuts do you think live on/near this road?
I talked to at least 5.
That's the total of cars we turned/waved away while the other 2 guys (from the truck in the gutter) waved people down the other way. We managed to run up to them (for the most part) before they crested the hill. 2 made it past the crest and immediately started their skid patterns. Their saving graces? 4 wheel drive and weight. One was a big truck (bronco? blazer? Not sure) and one was a Jeep. They both managed to make it into the museum backyard (not parking lot, mostly dirt and 'projects' like the gravel stacks). The truck blazed its way through the museum backyard to the museum parking lot, then over the curb and out. The Jeep maneuvered around the parking lot then went around the block until it could chain up the 2 guys in the truck and get them turned around and moving so they could park in a (better) (safer) (quasi-legal) area...around the bend down the hill.
Which left my car.

After Sic-un had parked the bike, assessed the situation, he walked to the house and called the cops. That was his errand. Nobody had the fricken non-emergency # (nobody hurt, nobody bleeding, but the potential is there). We needed the road blocked off or an ice truck or something. No accident, no issue, want a wrecker?
Um. Yeah. A wrecker would have been able to pop my car back 5 feet and over about 30 feet into the museum backyard. SAFE in the museum backyard.

So we ordered a wrecker from the cops, Sic-un came back out and gave me his hat (awwwwww... No, really, it's a cute hat-one of his xmas gifts-and it matches the bike colors and it's warm because it fits so well) and we debated and hrrmed and harrumphed and commented about the sad state of the neighborhood that nobody happened to have a ginormous bag of either kitty litter or rock salt lying around and we waited for the wrecker and we chased away stupid people that were more than willing to prove how big their balls were and how a little thing like a bit of ice on a hill wasn't going to stop them... ("No. Seriously. Look- [slip,slip,slideslide]- This is really slick even here and just over that hill crest? Yeah, there's a car in the middle of the roadway, stuck, and another just to the left of that. We've called for a wrecker already. 4 wheel drive slips and slides like mad. You're in a... Oh. A Fiero. Um. Yeah. You may want to seriously turn around.") It didn't scare them and they could drive through it with NOOOO problem... Until we told them there was a wrecker on its way already. Then they backed up and moved off down the just-wet roadway.
Figure about an hour or so? Yeah, I'd say an hour or so. Maybe as short as 45 minutes, but longer than a 1/2 hour of standing around waving off people because I didn't want my car wrecked... One of the Good Samaritans (gotta love the good ol' boy network around here sometimes) offered to move it right down. Stick? Yeah. Cool. Just drop it all the way low, no brakes, no gas, let the car do itself and nudge it down over there to the legal parking space on the not-so-likely-to-collect-victims side of the curve.

Sic-un and I walked the 100 feet or so to our front yard where we called the cops and cancelled the wrecker and mostly immediately poured good shots of vodka.

Skål!