Near death experience
So, I'm going to attempt to do this all in one run, but I still haven't recovered from the actual trip much so we'll see how this turns out.
Most of our family and friends still live in New Mexico so everyone didn't have to far to drive up to Salida, CO and Aric's wedding. Not many made it but it was understandable since the economy sucks so much and with my aunt so sick.
Joey and I had to drive 16 hours though, and oh my god, the passes in CO even in May are frickin' horrible. We almost didn't make the last half hour of the trip. We had made it to the very top of Monarch Pass, just west of Salida when, after driving through a ice storm in Cimarron and a blizzard somewhere in the middle of nowhere at 4am, my car decided that it had had enough of driving through 2 inches of hard packed snow. It was about 6am, you could see the light of the morning but no actual sun due to the heavy gray clouds that had formed over the area. Joey was crashed out in the passenger seat and after 14 hours of straight thru driving we were both sick of the car. We had been driving up the mountain for a while and the road conditions were just getting worse, and I was just about to try to find a place to turn around. We had not gotten a map of CO and I wasn't entirely certain if I had the correct directions or even how close we were if we hadn't taken a wrong turn.
My car then lost traction on the beginning of a curve and slid to a stop in the other lane facing the side of the road. We had a sheer cliff on one side and a solid rock wall on the side we were facing. We rocked to a stop and I was just thinking that "Thank God there had pretty much been no cars coming down the mountain so far" when I looked up and saw a semi full of cattle come roaring around the curve. By this time I had woken Joey up and he saw the truck the same time I did. I had enough time to roll the car into the side of the mountain, but the truck had still slammed on his breaks as much as he could and had begun to jack-knife. Joey had the door open and was yelling at me to get out of the car as we watched the truck lose all traction. There was no space between the actual road and the side of the mountain for me to really go into, but as the rear of the truck missed us by a couple of feet we realized that there was no guard rail on the portion of the road where he was careening towards. We could see that he had maybe about a foot before the front left wheel left the road. By some miracle, he managed to stay on the road long enough for it to make a curve in the other direction and he straighten out. While he straightened out and continued down the mountain Joey and I switched and we managed to get my car unstuck before anything else came down the road. However we no longer had any momentum to continue up the icy road and had to turn around. At this point I just wanted to go home.
It was and hour to the last town we had passed and any kind of phone reception. Sure enough though, we had to get over the mountain in order to get to Salida. We could take another 4 hours and go around the pass, but couldn't avoid any passes all together. Ugh. After 2 hours if debating though, we tried it again. By that time, apparently the graders had decided to melt the ice and snow off the roads. We managed to get into Salida with a couple of hours to spare before the wedding and pretty much no sleep. But we made it!
I love my car
Most of our family and friends still live in New Mexico so everyone didn't have to far to drive up to Salida, CO and Aric's wedding. Not many made it but it was understandable since the economy sucks so much and with my aunt so sick.
Joey and I had to drive 16 hours though, and oh my god, the passes in CO even in May are frickin' horrible. We almost didn't make the last half hour of the trip. We had made it to the very top of Monarch Pass, just west of Salida when, after driving through a ice storm in Cimarron and a blizzard somewhere in the middle of nowhere at 4am, my car decided that it had had enough of driving through 2 inches of hard packed snow. It was about 6am, you could see the light of the morning but no actual sun due to the heavy gray clouds that had formed over the area. Joey was crashed out in the passenger seat and after 14 hours of straight thru driving we were both sick of the car. We had been driving up the mountain for a while and the road conditions were just getting worse, and I was just about to try to find a place to turn around. We had not gotten a map of CO and I wasn't entirely certain if I had the correct directions or even how close we were if we hadn't taken a wrong turn.
My car then lost traction on the beginning of a curve and slid to a stop in the other lane facing the side of the road. We had a sheer cliff on one side and a solid rock wall on the side we were facing. We rocked to a stop and I was just thinking that "Thank God there had pretty much been no cars coming down the mountain so far" when I looked up and saw a semi full of cattle come roaring around the curve. By this time I had woken Joey up and he saw the truck the same time I did. I had enough time to roll the car into the side of the mountain, but the truck had still slammed on his breaks as much as he could and had begun to jack-knife. Joey had the door open and was yelling at me to get out of the car as we watched the truck lose all traction. There was no space between the actual road and the side of the mountain for me to really go into, but as the rear of the truck missed us by a couple of feet we realized that there was no guard rail on the portion of the road where he was careening towards. We could see that he had maybe about a foot before the front left wheel left the road. By some miracle, he managed to stay on the road long enough for it to make a curve in the other direction and he straighten out. While he straightened out and continued down the mountain Joey and I switched and we managed to get my car unstuck before anything else came down the road. However we no longer had any momentum to continue up the icy road and had to turn around. At this point I just wanted to go home.
It was and hour to the last town we had passed and any kind of phone reception. Sure enough though, we had to get over the mountain in order to get to Salida. We could take another 4 hours and go around the pass, but couldn't avoid any passes all together. Ugh. After 2 hours if debating though, we tried it again. By that time, apparently the graders had decided to melt the ice and snow off the roads. We managed to get into Salida with a couple of hours to spare before the wedding and pretty much no sleep. But we made it!
I love my car
posted by Crystal at 2:39 PM
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