Hey, I wrote this earlier while I didn’t have anything else to do…and thought I’d post it for posterity. ;)
It’s weird how difficult it is to type after an adrenaline rush and its subsequent crash. My fingers are still numb and I’m a bit weak and shaky, but at least I’m warm now. We were only about forty-five minutes from Angel Fire, winding through some beautifully glistening forests on a rural highway, when the tires started spinning and we realized we weren’t going to make it up the hill. Talk about an abrupt end to our jolly mood. Dad put it in reverse, backed down the hill, and tried again, but we started sliding and had to stop. The snow on the road was packed and frozen solid. Dad ordered us out of the van to start pushing, so there we were: Mom, Isaac, and me, pushing for all we were worth at the back of the van. My auto-response to emergency situations is to laugh, unfortunately, so I started to wonder if I was going to collapse from adrenaline or from giggling. It didn’t help that Mom was gripping the van with one hand and my pants with the other. Evidently she thought they were going to fall down. Anyway, it’s hard to push a sliding van up an icy hill when you’re laughing (just in case you were wondering.)
Fortunately, we’d only just started our arduous journey when an SUV appeared at the top of the hill, and four guys in their 20s jumped out and hurried down to help us. With the seven of us pushing, pulling, and tugging at the van, inhaling the fumes of burning rubber, we finally arrived at the top of the hill and the van gained enough traction to move on its own. Every electrical system in it was on the fritz, though, and we couldn’t get the automatic side doors to open. It was then that I really noticed the pain shooting down my fingers from the cold. No wonder -- it was only 15 degrees outside. As we were attempting to get back inside the van, another driver rolled down his window to let us know that there were a couple more hills to climb. Dad decided to go for it; after all, we didn’t really have any other choice. We made it around one or two more curves, but we slid to a stop on the next hill, and there was no way we were going to make it any further on our own. So, Mom pulled out her cell phone to call AAA and promptly realized that there was no service – at all. :P
There was an extremely nice man in the next vehicle that happened along, though, and he drove Dad a few miles down the road to a place with cell phone signal so Dad could get a call out to a towing service. The rest of us hung out in the van, thankful that we had a full tank of gas, while Dad stayed with the guy in his car and talked with him until the tow truck arrived about 45 minutes later. He towed us to a point where the snow plows had cleared the roads, and we finally arrived at Angel Fire after seven. It was definitely a more adventurous day than we had expected. Hopefully it isn’t an indicator of what’s to come this week! Anyway…sorry this was so long – I just wanted to write about it before I forgot how crazy it was. I’ll probably be posting a lot more on here this week since I’ll have some time for reflection. Snowy weather is perfect for that. I think that why I want to live where it snows sometimes.
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