During the end of the dance, the DJ kept telling us to drive careful because there had been freezing rain and snow while we were at the dance. My car has four-wheel drive so I brushed off the warning and we all headed to the car.
The first adventure came when I started trying to back out of a little hill I had decided to park on (genius!). I was backward on an incline trying to make it up onto the real road. After gunning it while in reverse and sliding the back of my car around for a little bit, a few kind boys offered to turn my car around at the bottom of the incline. I hesitated saying it would be a six point turn on ice and they could never just push my car in a full 180. Well, they did just that. They basically tapped on the back of my car and were able to turn it in a matter of seconds. Then I relied on my four-wheel, told everyone to get out of the way, and gunned my way to the top of the incline. All the boys were pretty impressed.
The real story came though when we started downhill on the road from the barn. So many people had already spun out that the people in charge were regulating when a car could start on the road so we were all spread out. They told us to put it in neutral and just tap our brakes on the way down. So many people had driven on the road that any snow providing traction had been cleared and now it was sheer ice. It resembled an ice skating rink but instead of skating on it we were trying to drive big cars down the icy one lane downhill road with fences lining both sides.
As we started down, the car in front of us spun out, but luckily I was able to quickly stop while some of the boys turned the car. We creeped forward again at about 10 MPH just rolling down in neutral. Suddenly the car ahead spun out again, but this time they were facing me in the middle of the road and my car wouldn't stop. I hit the brakes and held the car steady, but there was nothing to grip on the ice I was rolling down. The head-on collision seemed inevitable. Trish yelled a prayer, I screamed "PLEASE STOP MY CAR" multiple times with increasing urgency, a boy in my car jumped out to try and help.We picked up speed down the hill until at the last second when our car spun 90 degrees to the left and stopped a foot away from the car. We couldn't believe it. There was no reason for our car to slide left and stop still in the middle of the road. We all sat there with our cars in a "T" formation and made sure everyone was okay. When the car stopped, all the adrenaline left my body in the form of giant tears and then I just felt grateful.
I seriously felt like it was one of the most blatant "tender mercies" I've ever had in my life. All the boys running to help said they were sure we were going to hit them. Even the owner of the other car frantically ran and jumped a fence to get away from the seeming inevitable collision. It was a traumatic night but definitely a miracle. I drove an average of 20 MPH and rehashed the incident over and over with my passengers all the way back to Provo. The anxiety of the whole experience was still there and I was in desperate need of some comfort food. So, you guessed it, I drove straight to Taco Bell with the roomies and got a burrito. Somehow my comfort food from rough days at kindergarten still does the trick.
