It's possible to sail without using a boat

Back when I was teaching composition, my students would frequently say something like, “I can’t write the assignment because I can’t figure out how to start it.”

 

My answer was “Don’t start it then, just write it.” I explained that, thanks to modern word processing, there is no need to craft the perfect beginning before the rest of the writing can proceed. It’s often easier to write the start after one knows what path the rest of the piece follows.

 

Well, I am taking my own advice with this column, but for a rather different reason than all those students I advised. I can think of about a dozen ways to start this story, and I want to use them all.

 

So here’s the story: Last Friday night–a remarkably cold and windy evening, you may recall–I was driving home on slightly unfamiliar roads. I headed down a street I believed I recognized and proceeded forward into the dark night as if I were on a somewhat familiar gravel road that provides a slightly shorter route to my house than the blacktop.

 

I can’t say how fast I was going, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t much over 30 miles an hour, when I realized the road did not continue on, but instead came to a rather abrupt end.

I touched my brakes. 

 

My vehicle continued forward at the same speed as before.

 

It was only hours later, after the tow truck pulled me out, that I got to see just how shiny-slick that patch of road had been.

 

What I knew at the moment in question was that I had milliseconds to choose between various obstacles ahead of me. These included fences, trees, and a pile of snow probably five feet tall made when someone cleared snow from the road, probably with a tractor.

 

The snow was the obvious best choice.

 

I still shake my head in wonder that somehow, although I felt as if I had no control at all, I managed to miss a mailbox and turn my vehicle sideways so that I came to a stop broadside up against the pile of snow. A drift probably two feet deep had slowed me down as I slid, and my SUV was now surrounded partway up the carriage.

 

There was no way to open my door, and there was no way my vehicle would be able to drive out–but I was ecstatic. It’s amazing how many forms of disaster can flash through a driver’s head when she is careening wildly toward doom and destruction. 

 

Instead, I was unharmed, my vehicle was undamaged, and the motor was still running. A kind gentleman with a tractor would have pulled me out if it had been possible, but with my car buried as deeply as it was, he saw no safe way to attach a chain.

 

“You’re going to have to call a tow truck,” he concluded.

 

I contacted Triple A, and Triple A sent me periodic electronically produced text messages assuring me everything possible was being done to assist. I was informed a “high volume” of calls was making it difficult to find a service vehicle to help.

 

Time passed. 

 

I played a word game on my smartphone.

 

Time continued to pass.

 

Though I sat in my car for well over three hours, I could not make myself impatient or angry.

Every now and then I looked at the pile of snow just outside my driver side window, shook my head, and laughed gently.

 

I was unhurt, though severe injury would not have been a completely unlikely outcome.

I had no one but myself to blame for my predicament.

 

Yes, my carelessness of having misidentified the road was an inexcusable and embarrassing mistake, but I was warm and safe and help was being procured.

 

At about 8:30 I was informed T&W Towing out of Owatonna had agreed to perform my “extrication.” The tow truck driver, a rugged fellow named Pete, gave me a call and said he expected to arrive in about 30 minutes.

 

Right on time, headlights shone in my direction.

 

Pete popped out of his truck, walked through the snowbank and up on top of the snow pile near my driver’s side headlight. I rolled down my window to hear what he had to say.

“It looks,” he said brightly, “like you’re in a bit of a pickle. 

 

“I haven’t decided whether it’s a Gurkin or dill,” he declared. “But it’s definitely a pickle.”

 

With that he turned on so many floodlights I thought I was on a football field, positioned his tow truck, and slid my car out of the snowbank, making me feel somewhat like a kid on a backward-facing toboggan.

 

Roughly four hours after facing imminent disaster, my car’s tires were on a road and I could open my door.

 

Pete wouldn’t even accept a hug–not that I felt offended in any way when he declined.

It was now, with the floodlights glaring off it, that I saw just how shiny that 30-foot-long patch of ice was. I shook my head and laughed softly.

 

Then, with Pete’s tow truck leading, I drove back to the blacktop and silently vowed never to take another “shortcut” after dark. Ten minutes later I pulled into my driveway, opened my driver’s side door, and walked into my house. I was not in a hospital. My vehicle was not in a salvage yard.

 

All’s well, they say, that ends well. The increased caution I use when I see an icy road–and aren’t they all icy just now?--is probably a very valuable thing, so all is, indeed, well.

 

Now you know the story.

 

Here are some of the introductions that entered my mind.

 

I have a story I wish I didn’t have to tell…

 

In my case, “distracted driving” seems to be all in my head…

 

I learned the true meaning of “Minnesota nice” the other night while I was stranded in a snowbank…

 

Thanks to a recent experience, I have learned a few things about what artificial intelligence can…and can’t…do…

 

It was a dark and stormy night…

 

My mother always told me to keep good winter gear in my car. I never doubted her, but I recently learned just how wise her advice was…

 

It turns out, it’s possible to sail without using a boat…

 

No one should have needed to tell me that ice is slippery…

 

Have you ever felt as if you were flying?