When I got up on Wednesday morning I noticed that we had about six inches of snow in the driveway. I had not planned for this contingency, so I figured I would just to barrel my way through the snow and then everything would be fine once I got to the road. This is something that was taught to me by both my mother and father; point your car in the right direction, make sure nothing is coming and floor it, causing you to get through anything like a bat out of hell. This has worked well for most of my adult life.
I would usually take the Jeep to work under these circumstances but scott and dave were at the house and scott was going to use the Jeep to take dave to the airport so he could get back to work as a flight attendant. I trust my driving ability in the snow more than I trust scott’s, so I figured he could use the Jeep and have the 4×4 and I’d make due with the Acura.
As per my plan, I got out of the driveway just fine with one caveat. When I got to the road, I discovered that the county hadn’t done much in the way of plowing. “Hadn’t done much” actually meant that they hadn’t done anything and what was even more troubling was that the telltale signs of sand on the road weren’t present. The road was white with tire tracks. This computed in my brain in less than approximately two seconds when I got to the road and the Acura kept going like a bat out of hell: across the road. I got the car whipped around in the right direction but it still wanted to head in the direction we were previously headed. My dad once remarked that you can feel a car smile at times. While he was referring to a ’78 Impala back then, my ’05 Acura was yelling “WHEEEEE!” as it slid sideways into the driveway at the house across the street from ours.
Sigh.
I was parallel parked on the wrong side of the road across the driveway of our neighbors whom I have never spoken to aside from a friendly wave and who didn’t live there at the moment because of the fire they had a few months ago. I tried to get myself out of the driveway by doing the usual back and forth sort of thing. I got the car rockin’ (though it wasn’t really that sexy rockin’ one would hope for in a car) but it wasn’t going anywhere. The Acura continued to grin mischievously.
The neighbor’s house sits below the level of the road a little bit so I figured if I got myself into their driveway the right way, I could barrel myself out of the driveway like I had done at our house, expertly pointing the car back into our driveway and into the garage where I would leave it until spring. dave would have to take a train to get to his airline job.
The car easily slid down to the bottom of the driveway where it kept going off the end of the driveway and thankfully, just to the right of the large shed the neighbors had down there. I was stuck and no spinnin’, rockin’ or rollin’ was going to get the car out of there.
I was still in good spirits. Perhaps it was the “WHEEE” the car had done before, so I got out of the car and woke up dave and scott and told them they had to push me out of the driveway across the street. Now these two guys are experts at keeping you safe on any airline flight that involves their attendance and to their credit they are beefy guys, but there was no way that they were going to be able to push the car up the hill and onto the road, so I didn’t even bother yelling ‘words of encouragement’.
The plowing guy, a friendly chap named Tim, came along and helped with the pushing but to no avail. I was going to have to call a towing company.
The tow truck guy was very friendly and professional. “How did ya get that down there, boss?”, was his only question about the incident.
I explained my strategy and he said the county sucks with plowing and I could only do so much so with his tow truck and $75 per half hour, I was pulled out of the driveway in no time but not before a Toyota truck came flying into the neighbor’s driveway. Someone had passed me while we were down in the driveway and called him to let him know that someone had “flown off the road and into his house”. Now of course this didn’t happen but I am happy to say that 1. he didn’t care about the lawn we had torn up trying to spin the tires, 2. he is working on rebuilding the inside of the house that was burned and 3. I have done more than a friendly wave, we have had friendly conversation, exchanged a few anecdotes about the neighborhood and we have exchanged a handshake.
Surprisingly, my good spirits remained intact as I took three hours of personal time from work to bring this saga to a completion by getting dave to the train station so he could be to LaGuardia on time.
The Acura has been parked in the garage, where it belongs, until spring.
