Blog: 30andout on LiveVideo.com

Gender: Male
Status: Taken
Age: 56
Sign: Pisces
Country:

	Today	Week	Total
Posts	0	0	28
Comments	1	1	77
Views	11	19	3,055
Thumbs Up	2	2	142

Blog Archive

2009

2008

November

October

White Knuckle Whiteout

September

August

July

May

April

March

February

MONDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2008 (8:16 PM)

Return to 30andout's blog

White Knuckle Whiteout

In response to SillyLeslie's blog about adrenalin and all things weather, I've decided to cut and paste my comment to that blog into one of my own.

I once drove 15 feet behind a semi at 10 miles an hour for 3 hours in a blinding snowstorm on the NY Thruway (I-90).

I have a memory from 12 years ago of an ancient, giant brick building that was once an armory on the Cornell Campus. Dust wafted through the air, suspended in the sunlight that filtered through large windows, high on the walls of that cavernous structure, built 100 years ago as a National Guard Armory and now a state of the art athletic facility.

It was a significant event in my son’s life. He was a high school junior, and he had been running 100, 200 and 400 meters on the track team since he was in eighth grade. He also ran indoor track, where the event distances varied. One exception was the 4x100 relay, and that year his relay team won most of the season’s races. Along the way, they beat their own team record a couple of times and set a league record. Their time in the Sectionals won them a spot at the New York State Indoor Track and Field Championship at Cornell University.

The races I remember clearly. They placed in the first race, winning a spot in the next round. Their time in the second race was one of their best, but some of the teams from downstate were smoking. They had two or three runners on their teams that were as fast as (or faster than) the number one runner on my son’s team, and there was no touching them.

The whole atmosphere, being there with a dozen members from his own team, along with other members of teams he’d run with all season, as well as running with some of the elite runners from New York State, made it a memorable experience for my son.

As I said, I remember the races. The building is a little foggier. I remember the upper heights of the inside of the building as being dimly lit, with those dust motes sparkling in the light that was filtered through filmy windows. It may be a faulty memory though, because I’ve seen recent pictures of that facility, and, as I said, it is state of the art. The pictures I’ve seen even show banked turns on the track, so maybe there have been improvements since 1996.

My memory of the inside of that building has been pushed to the back of my mind by the memory of the trip home. I had gone outside for some fresh air between my son’s first and second races. It was early March, and the ground was dry. The sky was partly cloudy, but it turned to gray quickly, becoming ominous by the time I went back inside. When I went outside after his race, the sky was black, and snow was starting to fall. It was obvious we had to leave soon for the drive home, if we didn’t want to risk being stuck 150 miles from home. The team bus wouldn’t be leaving for at least another hour. We struck out on our own around 4:00 pm.

Going north from Ithaca towards the Thruway, there was 6 inches of snow on the road before we drove 30 miles (on a country highway). My wife kept her window open and "navigated" by watching the ditch alongside the road, since I couldn't see any lines, while I drove about 25 mph for the next 10 miles. The snow let up for the final 10 miles to the Thruway, but started blowing hard again within a half hour, as we headed west.

In the next 3 miles, traffic slowed to 40, then 20 and then to a crawl at 5 mph. After a half hour at that speed, the pace finally increased to 10 mph. At that point I moved from the passing lane and into the right lane, behind that semi – where we stayed for the next 3 hours.

The weather finally let up, and by the time we were within 50 miles of Buffalo, the roads were fairly clear. We parked our van in a suburban mall parking lot and waited for our son's team bus to arrive. After three or four hours of white knuckle driving, that hour and a half nap gave me some much needed rest!

I had the license plate number of that trailer etched in my mind until the middle of summer.

~~~ The next week, my son and I drove back east. We were going to visit Clarkson University, one of the schools my son was considering attending. Clarkson is in Potsdam, north of Watertown, east of Lake Ontario and about as far north as you can get in New York – and frigid. The snowfall we experienced near Ithaca was doubled, or tripled, in Potsdam, and still on the ground. When my son saw the prospect of crossing the quad for breakfast and first class in 10 degree weather – walking past snow piles 10 feet high in March – he said no way. He didn’t care how good the school was.

88 Views | 10 Thumbs Up | 5 Comments

Add Comment | Email

Comments & Responses

Post Comment

Posted Nov 10, 08 by SisterNan (

)
At least the semi-truck was too big to loose sight of. Keep following those tail lights and pray the person ahead knows where they're going!

Posted Oct 22, 08 by NatureJunkie (

)
In Colorado, I once drove about a hundred miles through a thunderstorm with a semi in front of me and one behind. In ordinary conditions, I would never stay wedged between two big vehicles like that, but with lightening striking the roadway, I liked having tall things around me.

I evaluate junior students who are transferring from other universities to the one where I work in sunny California. On the applications of those transferring from northern states, the absence of snow is often mentioned in their applications as the reason why they want to change schools. Your son figured it out before he was a freshman.

Posted Oct 21, 08 by SillyLeslie (

)
I like the extended version even better. :)

Posted Oct 20, 08 by SillyLeslie (

)
And you found the perfect image to go with this story. I like the license plate number reference..that brings it home.