Black Ice

So here's an interesting story!

Yesterday it warmed all the way up to 38 degrees here and rained.

Later in the day a cold front blew through and the temperature dropped 10 degrees in an hour. In fact all the wet roads and surfaces froze over pretty quickly.

Driving home I was very careful even though its only about a 5 minute trip.

As I approached the turn to my road I had to come to a full stop due to on coming traffic. Unfortunately I started to slide a little and actually went PAST the turn.

Luckily the only other car behind me was also be very careful and was a good ways behind me...or so I thought.

I looked into my rear view mirror in time to see his car sliding right at my bumper!

Note: Michelle and I had been discussing earlier in the day how happy we were that we were about to make our LAST PAYMENT ON THE TRUCK!!!!

To continue: The vehicle behind me continued to slide toward me so I tried to move over give him so room and he ended up sliding sideways into a drainage ditch. Just his rear passenger side tire...but enough that he was stuck good.

I circled back around and made sure the people in the car were OK and they assured me they were and they were going to call for a chain and a truck to get pulled out.

30 minutes later we were still on the road.

Fortunately two good things happened:

1) A PennDot truck came by. The driver stopped to see what happened and spread a large amount of ash in front of the car to help him get traction when he got pulled.

2) A man who lived within five minutes of here said he would be back with a chain to pull the car out.

While waiting (outside in the wind and cold) ANOTHER car started to spin out and head toward the stuck vehicle!

Fortunately two good things happened:

1) The driver of the truck coming the other way saw what was happening and had the good driving skills to swing down a side road and miss the on coming car.

2) When the sliding car went sideways he hit the ash and stopped! He drove away probably considering himself very lucky!

A few minutes later our good Samaritan showed up and in a few minutes the care was free and no damage was done.

The guy with the chain would not take any money. "Its what Americans do for each other." He said. Seriously.

Then we find out the guy who was stuck was leaving for a tour in Iraq this morning!

We both shook his hand and I told him that I hope he was safer there than he was on the road last night!

And we all went our separate ways.

Kind of restores your faith in fellow man to see how many people stopped to check on the car and the people inside.

~ Glenn