12/21/08

As I drift along through this rather ho-hum life of mine, I find very few opportunities to present myself as any kind of respectable individual. So, on that rare occasion when the situation allows, you bet your ass you're gonna hear about it.

The wind kicked up overnight and kept me from getting any kind of decent sleep as it rocked my truck to and fro. One other thing that it did was to blow the six inches of snow away from the parking lot where I spent the night. Underneath - hockey rink. I'll be damned. I honestly had no idea that the ice was that thick under there. My truck's thermometer displayed a perfect zero degrees, so I did the quickest pre-trip inspection known to man and then started to drive away.

As I got to the main driveway of the truck stop, I saw someone blocking the way. Have you ever seen those shitty little minivans towing those shitty little cars? I see them all over the country and I have no idea what they are all about. Anyhow, one of those guys was stuck on the ice and couldn't get moving. Go around through the car parking area or get out to help the guy? Zero degrees outside. Hmm...

So I tried getting the guy to rock back and then go forward whenever I gave his van a shove. After a few tries it became clear that this wasn't going to work. The slight slope of the driveway caused the trailing car to want to go to the left, meaning that any time the van's wheels started spinning the ass end of the van was going left too. Even though we could get the van to inch forward, it got more and more jackknifed as we did so. I tried to think of another way to get him moving as the first truck behind mine drove through the car parking area and onto the road. And this was when my hands went numb.

The first thing that we would have to do was to get him backed up and unwind that jackknife situation. Then we could find a dry patch somewhere to get him started forward. Then he could stay on the gas while I walked alongside and leaned my fat ass against his van to try to keep it from jackknifing. That was the best plan that I could produce. You got it? Good. Now translate it into Spanish. Yeah, seriously. And this was when my vision went blurry.

Phase One of the plan was to get him rolling backward, but this would be no easy feat. I headed over to my truck and grabbed my crowbar. I don't have one of those standard little crowbars with the one flat end and the one hooked end. Well actually I do have one of those. It came with my truck. But I also have a big ass beast of a crowbar. It's four and a half feet of thick manly steel. That's the one that I grabbed. Through some language-neutral hand gestures, I managed to show the fella how I needed him to set up his steer tires. Then I wedged the crowbar under one of them and against the icy driveway. I got a good dig into the ice and then lifted with all of my less than considerable might. The tire gave a little against the crowbar, so I knew I had some decent leverage applied to the van. My hope was that, once the guy started spinning the wheels backward, gravity would seek the path of least resistance and take the van away from the crowbar. Much to my surprise, it actually worked. I had to reposition every couple of feet and restart the thing, but it worked by golly. And this was when I started gasping for air.

By this time there was a JB Hunt truck stopped beside mine, watching the action. He must not have realized that he could get out through the car parking area. Otherwise why sit there if he wasn't going to help? Our next challenge would be to get the van moving forward while keeping it from jackknifing again. I gave it a few good shoves and we managed to rock it forward a bit. "Easy on the gas" must mean "Give it hell!" once translated, because that's what my new amigo kept doing. So there I was trying to keep the weight of the van from sliding sideways as we slowly but surely managed to inch it forward. And this was when I slipped on the ice and bashed my knee.

Once we got the van started on a nice straight line toward the exit, the fella seemed to be on his way so I struggled back to my truck. We had gotten it moving just in time to cut off a Schneider driver who was trying to go around through the car parking area. Poetic justice, I thought. Then the guy got stuck again. Son of a... I was bleeding. I could hardly see. My hands were numb. I was coughing up phlegm. And now he was stuck again? I had to catch my breath before I could even think about heading back out there. Maybe that Schneider dude could give the guy a hand since I had already taken care of the tricky part. All he needed by this point was a little shove to get him started up a hill. You know what that pumpkin driver did? He jumped the curb on the right side of the driveway to get around the guy. Ain't that something?

Once the numbness from my hands had turned into acute pain in my hands, I decided to head out and finish the job. Just then, the Mexican fella managed to rock himself forward enough to get up the hill and proceed on his way. The JB Hunt driver patiently waited for me to get my act together and then followed me out of the truck stop. I couldn't see much until my eyes warmed up a little, but I was rolling before too long.

Once I got on the road I was relieved to see clean and dry pavement. It was too cold last night for anything to melt and the wind had blown all of the snow off the road. There was no traffic at all going past Chicago and the drive was nice and easy. The only slick spots showed up as I got to South Bend. The wind was blowing snow off the fields and onto the road there, causing some pretty lousy visibility in some spots. Yeah, the snow isn't the only thing that blows in South Bend these days, but anyway...

I pulled into another icy hole of a truck stop on US-12 in Niles to call it a day. I have to deliver a few miles away from here by 6am, so that should be pretty fun. Looking for a customer on icy roads before the sun comes up, that's usually a treat.

Now for the disclaimer: If I had known then what I know now, I would most definitely have driven around through the car parking area and let that van driver handle his own problems. I guess I'm not such a respectable individual after all.