Along with many strangers who happened to be passing by. I left work early to get home before the weather got really bad, but my normal 20-minute commute took me almost an hour and a half. What started out as sleet turned into heavy wet snow. I finally got home and started shoveling the driveway so John (in his Mustang – terrible in this weather) would be able to pull in. Twenty minutes later, I got a call. John was stuck. He was in the right turn lane about a mile and a half away, and he needed rescuing. I threw the snow shovels in the my car (4-wheel drive – thanks, Dad!) and went to meet him. We shoveled down to pavement so his tires could get a grip, and he was able to get in the left turn lane. (A guy in a pickup truck stopped and offered to pull him out, but John had it under control by then.) He needed to do a u-turn to get home (we were trying to avoid hills – his car wouldn’t make it up a slippery incline), but he got stuck in the left lane at the light. I got back out of my car and tried to push him forward (the traffic was pretty light – we weren’t worried about pushing him into the middle of a busy intersection), his tires were spinning, and then I heard someone behind me yell, “No no no! Slow down! Stop!” Some other guy had stopped in the turn lane behind me (we all had our flashers on) and was running up to help. He said he was from Minnesota (there aren’t many credentials better than that in this kind of weather), and he coached John (with totally contradictory suggestions (“Easy now, easy, go go go, no, take it easy!”) through the u-turn while helping me push from behind. We got John around the median and facing the other way (the right way to go home), and then I followed John up the road. He made it about a mile and then got stuck (in the middle of the intersection) making a left turn. This time a guy who was out walking his dogs (and his family) ran over to help me push. We helped John rock the car out of the center and get across the road. Our plan at this point was to get to the parking lot of the shopping center where the Bloom used to be and just leave the car there. We live uphill from everywhere, and there was no way his car was going to make it. He didn’t even make it all the way to the parking lot. He got stuck on the road right next to it, but there are parking spaces along that road, so we shoveled one clear and kinda pushed and shoved his car into it. We’ll retrieve it tomorrow. That whole time (somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half) the snow was coming down like crazy. My jeans were soaked through and I had snow falling down the back of my neck. A warm dinner was called for (and wine for me and rum and coke for John). Luckily, while the band was rehearsing last night, I made a pot of Dad’s beefy rice (dirty rice, kidney beans, onion, hamburger), and all we had to do was heat it up. Turned out great. (Thanks, Dad!)
Inane Chatter
What were you expecting?
