The Voltage Gate

I wish someone was following me around with a video camera this week. They could have made a mint in America's Funniest Home Video submissions.

It's been snowing steadily all week, but nothing new for me. I've been in the mountains full time for over four years now, and we've had our share of inclement weather. The kicker is that my commute is about 40 minutes one way, as opposed to about eight back in F-burg, and the roads here are not as meticulously maintenanced like they are in Maryland (lol... which is sad in itself).

Monday was fine. No problems traveling at all. Took me a bit longer to get down there, but otherwise things were clear. The next three days were worthy of a bad sitcom. Or a trite slapstick flick starring Vince Vaughn (pick one) where he gets mad, kicks things, has a potty mouth and, at the end, finds the wondrous, generalized, denominationally ambiguous spirit of Christmas (which may or may not be supernatural) that doles out redemption through the acceptance of its capitalist tenets.

Anyhoo, I had to drop Heather off at work, which at this point is about 30 minutes out of the way. We didn't make it. The roads were a total mess on the highway and we ended up turning around halfway (which took 30 minutes itself). We turned back and I dropped her off so she could call out. I ended up being about 30 minutes late for work - which I abhor.

The roads continued to worsen over the next day. The only reason I was able to get around at all was because I have a little Subaru tank, which usually has no problems keeping its footing in the snow.

On Wednesday morning I was coming over the crest of a hill, which descended into the outskirts of a little town where the major highway junction splits. I started to slow down to prepare for a red light at the bottom of the hill.

As soon as I put the smallest pressure on the brakes, my car started sliding forward. A line of cars sat at the red light, the last in line, a minivan, about 100 yards from my out of control vehicle.

I steered right, fishtailing out into the oncoming traffic lane, which was empty at that point. I must have hit a dry patch at that point, and slid the other direction, missing the minivan and slamming the right nose of my car into the guard rail. The momentum forced the entire side to hit after I busted the right corner.

I'm freaking out at this point. We're already down to one car, and can barely afford to pay for heat in our house, much less repairs to a new car. I pulled up to a safer spot and got out to check the damage.

The left hand corner of my car is smashed, bumper hanging, but somehow the bulbs stayed intact.

No one stopped to ask if I was okay. I was passed by at least 20 vehicles in the two minutes I spent checking out the damage. Don't believe the bullshit you hear about tight knit small communities and country hospitality - in four years up here, I can say that I have consistently met nicer, more communicative people on the streets of New York and DC. We city folks get a bad rap for all our rushing, self absorption and out of my way mentality, but at least we're not deluded xenophobes trying to portray ourselves to the world as something we're not.

Mechanically, the car is fine. No knocking or other oddities, but I did smash the mechanism that releases the gas cap, so I have to yank it open.

Thursday was the crowning moment of the week, one of those days where you are mentally driven from your body by circumstance and float beside yourself, waiting for the next classic blunder.

I had to drive Heather to work again, and this time had no problems. On my way out of town, my tires were knocking against the ice caked inside my wheel well, and I had a couple of minutes to spare, so I pulled into a car wash stall to blast the ice out.

As I was finishing up, the power washer caught a weird pocket of ice and spit soapy water all over my clothes, head to toe. With no towels in the car, I used an old t-shirt to wipe off the soap splatters (scotch guard ftw) and jumped in the car.

At higher speeds, the damn tire was still knocking, so I pulled over to try to dislodge it. The back seat was filled with extra kitchen junk that was supposed to go to storage and, in a hurry, I reached over to grab a cooking pot from one of the boxes.

A loose bag of flour rolled out and smacked the pavement, releasing a thick cloud of fine powder at my feet. My pants were still flecked with water spots from the car wash, and the flour stuck like little polka dots.

All I could do at this point was laugh. On the side of the highway, soap stained and coated in bread flour, I whacked at the brown ice encrusting the wheel wells of my Subraru with a sauce pot.

If nothing else, it gave me a bit of perspective. When your luck is so bad, I think people disconnect from these situations differently, some by becoming numb to it or ignoring it. I can't do that. It's just too funny at some point, a massive convergence of things going wrong that can. Makes me think about the chances of certain circumstances in succession, and what else can you do at that point but say, "So it goes..."?

If you're worried that TVG will be turning into a whiny I'm-out-of-place-and-weird-shit-is-happening-to-me blog, don't be. I have a nice stack of ecology papers, stories and books to go through when things calm down.