Driving in a winter wonderland

On my way home from a business trip this week I stopped at a friend's house in Oklahoma City. We ended up going to a party to watch OU get creamed by USC; it was not a happy evening! That night Mother Nature decided to clobber Oklahoma City with mounds of snow and ice, perhaps to punish OU for apparently playing football with their eyes closed. When I went out to my car the next morning the doors were frozen shut and I couldn't get my key in the lock. With the help of some cold water on the door and salt on the windshield, I managed to enter my vehicle and begin the defrost process. Twenty minutes later I was on the road.

I have my suspicions that God looked down over the Oklahoma/Kansas region, saw my planned route along I-35 North, and said to the angels, "I've decided to focus all the storm energy right here:"

And that, since God is eternally reliable, is exactly what happened.

Despite all the hurdles placed in my way of getting home--slow vehicles, messy wrecks on the freeway, big trucks that send a shower of snow and slush your way powerful enough to blast you off into the median, not to mention the small percentage of road actually visible--I managed to get home in one piece, albeit 2 hours later than expected. The only major incident was when I fish-tailed a few times and then dipped into the snow-covered grass median. Ironically, this only happened because I touched the brakes to slow down and help another guy who was already in the median. After I drove out of the grass and parked on the shoulder, I left the car running (who's gonna steal it?) and ran to the stuck guy behind me. After first dialing my cell service's information number, then the local operator, who transferred me to the police station, who then transferred me about eleventy billion more times until I spoke with a guy at the nearest Highway Patrol station, I told them my new friend's situation and they promised to send a tow-truck. I uncured my fingers from the phone, taking care not to break any of them off my hand (it was really darn cold), told the guy good luck, and raced against the wind back to my car. As I drove away I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a cop pull over--lights flashing--to my new friend. I decided to scram quick, in case he questioned me and a) smelled the alcohol on my breath, or b) found the bags of heroin in my dashboard and hub caps.

(Just kidding on that last part. The cop's lights weren't actually flashing.)