The roadtrip of limitations

So i drove my child to the Chi' in the dead of winter...i know wtw was i thinking. well i was thinking that i had learned to drive in the worst of Chi-town's winters and well, i could do it again. so i loaded up my car, with my child, with snacks and pops, picked up my aunt and hit the road... and i was doing fine despite driving in the mountains in the dead of night with bigrigs flying past me on narrow turns. but i was confortable with where i was speed wise. i mean i was doing 65 through the mountain and that was putting me right on target with me getting to the Chi' in at least 9 hours instead of the 12 hours it was said to take. and we were HIGH in the mountains..up there with the fog and the eagles. so i wasn't trying to keep up with the bigrigs, i would catch them on the flat ground. so in about four hours time, i was coming out of the PA mountains looking and feeling good. my knee was holding up and so was my body odor..(driving cross country in a heated car is bound to make your deodorant run dry) but like clockwork, i started getting sleepy.. i asked my aunt if it was around 3 am cuz that is typically the time my body likes to shut down. she told me yeah...so at the next rest stop i pulled off, i didn't want to be driving and going to sleep with my child in the car. my aunt told me that she would dry so that we wouldn't get behind schedule..i asked her if she was sure..and she was like yeah.

i remember walking up and grabbing her arm as i felt the car jerk back and forth... i asked her if she was okay...she said yeah... i looked outside and there was noone or nothing around besides the pretty snow that had covered Ohio the day before. i watched her for a couple of minutes to make sure she was okay before doozing off back to sleep. some thirty minutes later i woke up feeling rested and told my aunt that i would take over, she told me that she was fine and that i should try to get a few more minutes of sleep.

well a few more minutes is all i got because i was suddenly awaken to the thump thump sound that had jolted me away the last time i had made this trip, when SB almost drove us off the side of the mountain. my eyes shot open as my aunt was saying 'i can't believe i just did this' and my heart dropped and i was thinking oh, no not this crap again...but i wasn't frightened because i was like we on flatland and i knew we weren't going off the edge of the mountain. i watched as my car cascaded off the side of the road and shot toward this embankment covered in ice, branches and snow. i remember jerking my head back and forth trying to think out the situation.. i remember glancing back at my child, who was still sound asleep...i remember thinking 'why is the Devil always after me.' i never said a word i just kept praying that we didn't hit the wall hard and was very thankful that i had move my child's seat from behind the passenger's side to behind the driver's seat. i watched as right before impact my aunt sharply turned the vehicle to the left, causing my body to be thrown into the door, as we narrowly missed colliding into the structure outside of the barb-wired fence. i let out a sigh of relief as i watched my car settle into some type of ravine/ditch filled with water and mud. i looked up towards the road watching as the car shot passed thinking 'someone had to see us go off the side of the road....why hasn't anyone stopped?'

my aunt looked at me as she tried to see if she could get the car to move. it was stuck...she tried to gather her thoughts together to explain how we had to come to be in the position that we were in... i just looked at my child who was still sound asleep. i told her that we were going to have to get towed out and she handed me her phone.. i called 911 ... 20 minutes into my call with 911 a passerbyer stopped and came to see if we were okay...they were traveling from VA. My aunt told them we were fine.. he asked if we needed anything and she told him no that help was on the way.

so the po-po's and the tow truck get there and examine our predicament. the po-po walked around the vehicle as much as he was capable too, trying to assess the damage. he then notice my child in the car and chuckled stating, 'it doesn't even looked like the lil guy woke up.' i said, 'he didn't and that's a blessing because he would have been petrified.'

the lil tow guy got us rigged up to his machine and after about 25 minutes, he had us back on the slick shoulder. the cop explained that the even though the roads were clear, the shoulders hadn't been treated. he examined my car and told me that it didn't look like much damage but that my car was covered in mud. (the right side of my car was covered in mud and my hubcap had been destroyed... the rain knocked most of the mud off but it was atleast 1 foot of mud on my car) he told me that since everything and everybody was okay no report would be done that we just needed to settle our bill with the tow guy and we could be on our way

well my cash flow was calculated and i was hoping he wasn't going to really put me in the hole..he was like 91 bucks if i needed a receipt and 40 if i didn't. so yeah, you know i ain't got proof of ever being towed out of that ditch.

we got back on the road and at the next pull off i took over and drove all the way to the Chi dropped my child off and turned around and drove back to DC ...the PA mountains were an adventure on the way back because my knee had swollen to the size of a baby watermelon and felt like it was going to sever itself from my thigh bone. my windows were fogging and refusing to defrost...my aunt couldn't find me a cd with enough bounce and beat to keep me motivated... the mountain's roads were getting slick and well um, i couldn't bring myself to ask my aunt to drive. so when we finally reached a rest stop i pull over to rest my knee. my aunt said she was gonna sleep some so she could help me drive because she didn't trust herself driving w/o rest because of the earlier incident. she told me to get out and stretch my legs...i got out and fell against the car. i couldn't stand on my leg let alone walk...i got back in the car in tears.... i cried myself to sleep. i woke some 2hrs? later and hit the road...my knee was better but i still didn't trust myself with putting pressure on it...so now instead of doing 65 through the mountain, i was doing 40 and sometimes less. it pained me to but my blinkers on... i didn't want to be identified as the slow car...but the fact was, i was the slow car and i rather get home safely then to speed and not get home at all. the ice storm we had left in the Chi had caught up with us... and for some reason my windshield wipers weren't working fast enough...and well the rain that it didn't knock off my glass instantly turned to ice...( i was going to take a pic of it but the man at the mickey d's window plucked it all off talking about people never did what they were supposed to do so he was gonna help us out.)

let me tell you that when i finally exited that mountain some 8 HOURS later, i was one happy and frustrated camper. i was happy because we were alive and frustrated because it had taken us longer to get through the mountain than it had taken us to get to Chi-town on the way down.

i asked my aunt if she could drive once we got on 270 she said yeah...i drifted off to sleep and woke up just in time to see the car drift across the lane...i called out to my aunt and she was like i don't know what's going on with me tonight...needless to say i stayed up the rest of the way home..

i thanked my aunt for coming because it had been fun: she got to see Chicago and I got to learn the beauty of recognizing my limitations. i knew that i wanted to drive straight through and stay under 10hrs in doing so, but the reality of it was, i couldn't do it. my knee had had enough and mine and my aunt's safety was more important than me getting back in record time. and i also realized that just because someone can drive, doesn't mean that they can DRIVE...it's a technique to driving across country and either you got it or you don't...and you got to recognize it and move on...

and to think i have to drive down and get him in a couple of days