Risky Travel

Tuesday afternoon was planned for the drive to Chicago. Going into the office first thing in the morning with my bag already packed and in Jed's back seat (Jed = my '99 Mercury Mountaineer), I heard weather forecasts on the radio predicting somewhere between 3 and 6 inches of snow later in the day.

But I had lots to accomplish in the office before hitting the road, so I got to work. By around 11AM, Claudia called to tell me it was snowing pretty heavily and she was hearing reports of people sliding off roads everywhere. Maybe I should postpone my trip for another day.

I responded that I had to go, because there were people coming to my training class up there from other parts of the country, and if I cancelled I'd be messing up their schedules and wasting their travel expenses. I decided to try getting as much of the most important work done in the office, then getting an earlier start on my drive north.

It was 2:00 when I finished the last of the most urgent tasks and began my trip. As I made my local stops at the ATM and gas station, I wondered whether it was a good idea to try driving all the way to Chicago in the storm.

Temperature was about 5 Farenheit, and so the snow had a sandy consistency, rattling the windshield as I drove. The roads were snow-covered and slippery, and I noted a couple of cars in the ditch as I slowly and carefully made my way to the interstate. Despite the heavy snow and poor road condition, I was able to drive through it all with about a quarter-mile of visibility, so I decided to try a few miles on the interstate and if it was too bad, I'd turn around.

The interstate wasn't too bad at first. The right lane was mostly open, and although it was snow-covered in places, I was able to move along at about 45MPH, so I decided to keep going.

But as I passed through Indianapolis, the road got worse. The extreme cold made the granular snow hit my warm windshield, melt briefly, then re-freeze against the windshield wipers until the wipers were completely encased in hard ice and useless.

I kept moving north of Indy, but gradually the average speed dropped to 30-35 as conditions worsened. I pulled off in the first roadside rest stop for a bathroom break, and cleaned off my windshield as best I could while knocking the ice off the wipers.

Then as I approached Lafayette, traffic came to a halt. Not being able to see ahead of the trucks I was parked behind, I found a report on the radio that there were a couple of jacknifed trucks in the Lafayette area that had stopped traffic. It was about an hour before the traffic moved beyond the jam, but even then I could not get up to speed on the icy highway.

I drove from Lafayette through the Region at about 30MPH, passing cars and trucks stuck in the median and the ditch on both sides of the road as I went. And getting rather stressed and tired. When I finally reached the Region, I considered pulling off the road for a break and some dinner, but decided that would just make the already long trip interminable. So I soldiered on.

Finally I made the turn on the 80-94 highway toward Chicago, and it looked pretty clear. I started to increase my speed, until an SUV ahead of me spun from left to right into the snow on the right shoulder. The road looked clear, but it was black ice. I tested my brakes and immediately felt Jed's back end begin to fishtail. So I backed down again to 30.

I finally reached my hotel after 8 hours after a trip that normally takes about 4 and a half. Exhausted, I went to bed and fell asleep fairly quickly.

Should I have made the trip? Probably not. But I got there, taught my class, and drove home Thursday night in the normal 4 and a half hours.