eight states, one province, seven days

Considering the week I’ve had, starting with the 13 hour blizzard drive to Virginia, and concluding with our 20 hour drive from Northern Colorado to Calgary, Alberta, you’d think I was training for The Amazing Race.Thankfully, I am not. And traveling across eight states and one province over the course of a week (and this doesn’t even including the states I flew over getting from Virginia to Colorado) has made me much less inclined towards travel, in general, and road trips, specifically.

I’d like to be say that our Calgary road trip was uneventful and less painful than I thought it would be, but unfortunately that’s not the case. We left April’s apartment at 6:30am, her dog and lots of luggage and Christmas presents in tow, and arrived at her parents’ house in Calgary at 2:30am. We stopped every two to three hours to let the dog out and get gas (at my insistence that we keep the gas tank at least half full to avoid becoming the new Donner party) and entertained ourselves with the first Harry Potter audio book and trying to stay on the road.

Weather conditions, despite multiple reports to the contrary, were not amusing. April drove the first leg, and we started to get a little worried once we entered Wyoming and could see huge clouds on the horizon.


We tried to remain optimistic, but it seemed that each time one of us said “well this isn’t too bad” or “at least we can still see the road,” things would get worse. By the time we were mid-way through Wyoming, April was fighting to both keep the car from being blown off the interstate by huge gusts of wind and see where she was driving through all the blowing snow.



Because I wasn’t driving, I had the luxury to be flippant about the road conditions, commenting on the beauty of the winter landscape. But I would pay dearly for my cheek once I took over the wheel.

Soon, I was driving and conditions cleared for just long enough to lure me into complacency before they got suddenly and horribly worse. The road filled with snow, the four wheel drive wasn’t on—I had forgotten to turn it back on because of the abruptness of the snow’s return and because, in my car, it’s an automatic function—and April was asleep. I tried to drive carefully, listening to Harry Potter, when all of the sudden I hit ice and the car spun to the side at 50 mph. I held onto the steering wheel tightly and tried to pry my foot off the brake (knowing that braking only makes the skidding worse). April woke up in a panic to the sound of me cursing loudly and the sight of the car skidding rapidly sideways down the middle of the interstate. After a few, very long, seconds, we glided to a halt facing backwards but still on the road. As I was trying to turn the car around, still slipping and sliding on the ice, a truck driver decided he couldn’t wait for me and passed me on the shoulder. Luckily, the few other cars on the road stopped and waited while I tried to coax the car forwards.

My hands were shaking and April offered to drive but there were no convenient exits for another hour or so, and I wasn’t about to pull over on the side of the road and end up sliding into the ditch. I consider myself a good and fairly calm driver, but after that I was pretty much a nervous wreak for the rest of the drive (i.e. the next 16 hours) even though once we got to Montana weather conditions cleared up for the most part.


Finally, we were able to trade places and I felt the weight of all my anxiety fade away as I sunk into the passenger seat, totally spent. Unfortunately, when it was my turn to drive again, later in the night, I pulled out of a Safeway parking lot right into three lanes of oncoming one-way traffic! In my defense, there were no signs, but this didn’t help much to calm my already frayed nerves.

Throughout the night, April and I referred to my 180 degree spin-out as “the teacup incident” (because of something my mother said comparing it to that Disney Land teacup ride), but levity aside I was still terrified long after all the ice had melted away. Later, as I was driving the last leg through southern Alberta, I kept feeling phantom ice beneath our tires, imagining the road sliding out from under us with the rotation of the earth, navy sky and dark pavement blurring together.

Still, despite my anxiety and our near-misses, we made it safely to Calgary and are now ensconced here, seemingly gaining a new pound every hour as we’re stuffed full of food and candy. Tonight, there will be eleven people at the dinner table and a room of presents and I can’t think of a better place to be.

Merry Holidays everyone!