Sunday morning I packed my things from the Thanks Giving festivities while awaiting my ride back to the good old WWU campus. The drive would only take around 4 hours to get back, and we left at noon just to be sure to surpass the hideous Seattle traffic. I fell asleep in the back seat, my belongings tucked around me, while 24-hour radio Christmas music hummed from the speakers. As I awoke an hour and a half later, we still had not made it through the city. Outside the snow began to fall, and it was becoming dark outside. I knew someone was amuck.
We eventually made it past Seattle, when the car began sliding across the road, and we soon pulled off into a little gas station to chain up for the slippery slopes ahead. The only problem was that we didn’t exactly know what we were doing. I retract that- we had no clue what we were doing.
With two girls and a strapping young lad in the car, he naturally took the initiative to get down and dirty on the ground, tightening the metal hooks onto the wheels. After hot chocolate, forty-five minutes, and making sure the chains were good and tight, we slid back onto the freeway, not exceeding more than 25 mph. It was like driving with a grandparent, only instead of wishing I were dead from boredom, I was praying to the gods for a chance of survival.
Mt. Vernon was where the shiz began to fly. No, not fly, rather more like dead stop. Just shiz sitting there, waiting for you to unexpectedly step in it. Our car was stopped, along with what seemed to be every student at Western Washington and every Canadian just North of the BC border.
It stretched on for about 15 miles, with everyone sitting in his or her vehicles for ten minutes, and then slowly creeping upwards for about thirty seconds. Sitting. Crawling. Sit. Crawl.
For four hours.
Did you hear me? Four Hours.
I received some good cheer from my mother who had called, expecting me back already. “Well, at least you’re moving, and you’re not hurt.”
“Are you kidding me?” I replied. “I’d rather be unconscious, and then at least I wouldn’t have to sit through this.” She laughed, which made me even bitterer. I was being serious, not attempting to be a comic.
We had little means to keep us entertained. Mostly it was a round of profanities from each of us after every commercial break.
“There better be blood on this road,” the driver announced around 10:30 pm.
We passed several tow trucks, police cars with their flashing lights, a snapped tree- all lead to the false hopes that this was the cause of the hold up, and we would finally make it out alive- yet none were.
11:30 pm was when we finally broke free. Just all of a sudden. No accident. No blood. No horror. Rounded a corner, and we were out.
Disappointment and frustration flew through our veins.
“THAT WAS IT?”
“What WAS the problem?”
“I’m going to KILL someone”
(Profanities, curses, “a pox’s”).
After lugging my suitcase, backpack, purse, and food up two flights of icy stairs, I finally made it back to my room. I was exhausted. Plugging my laptop into its’ internet and power outlets, I cursed the snow and it’s misleading promise of happiness. Following the reading of the school website and its announcements, I laughed like a crazy person to myself. A four-hour drive, ending twelve hours later, only then to discover that school was cancelled.