A Three Hour Tour

With Atlanta and the soaking rain behind me, the mission was now to pick up freight in Cleveland, Tennessee and simply transport it to a location outside of Harrisburg, PA. The route would be a straight shot up I-81, an interstate I have travelled more times that I could possibly remember. I know every crack in this road. My travel on this freeway has included all the seasons over many years. Your friendly author here has been on it  in every kind of weather event and yes, snow on several occasions.

By the time I arrived in Southwest Virginia, this storm had dropped perhaps 8 inches of winter, making travel slow, but not impossible. The highway was relatively clear, affording me the opportunity to make up a little time lost by slow going in Tennessee early on created by road crews salting and sanding. Christiansburg, Virginia popped up on the GPS prominently pearched on the dash of the Fat Cat signaling to me that Roanoke wasn’t very far up the road. Traffic began to build and then suddenly stopped cold. Trucker chatter on the CB turned to the hold up and before long it was being reported that there was an accident up ahead at mile marker 128. Dam, I’m sitting here looking at mile marker 111. This is going to take a while. Motorists began to pop out of their vehicles and a concerned looking man from a four wheeler (trucker slang for a car) came up to my window and asked if I heard anything on my CB radio. I told him what the truckers were saying and that he should make himself comfortable, this was going be a good wait. He thanked me shaking his head as he walked away. I rummaged in my on board food cupboard for something to eat and came up with a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee over stuffed ravioli to throw in the microwave in a Styrofoam bowl covered with wax paper. From my vantage point in the truck, I watched kids play football catch on the shoulder of the road and folks standing around in conversation circles on the roadway. After lunch, I called my brother Tom who was on his way to New York with his family by car from South Carolina. They decided to take I-95 and avoid this mess.  They usually take this route, but changed their plans after seeing the back ups on TV.

Hour number four was approaching and my thoughts turned to who was involved in the accident. It must have been very serious for the highway to be shut down this long. A wave of sadness passed over me with the thought that someone might not make it home for Christmas. This person or persons were on the same course as I was. Now, they might not be. Like Don Henley once sang, life can change in a New York Minute. Always consider the important things in life. That’s what the song says.

Finally, after four hours of listening to truckers grousing on the CB, copious texting on the phone and a pipe full of Kate’s special blend from the cigar lounge back home in Hiram, traffic began to move. As I moved forward, I discovered abandoned and snow covered automobiles littered both sides of the interstate. Some were pointed in unnatural positions. I spotted a U-Haul moving truck with a trailer and a late model Honda Accord on it in a ditch. Now, that had to be a moving experience someone will never forget. Further up the road, I encountered two more stoppages, for additional accidents that weren’t as long as the one in Christiansburg.

As the clock ticked 16:00, evidence of nightfall began to appear. In yet another backup, I passed an intermodal tractor trailer jack-knifed across the highway. An intermodal is a container trailer that comes from a ship or a train and is attached to a trailer assembly with wheels to be pulled by truck. There was just enough room to fit my truck between the back end of the jack knifed trailer and the guard rail. Lucky for that, or that would have been another four hour wait.

Abandoned and snow covered vehicles continued to show up on the sides of the highway. Supposedly, the National Guard rescued countless motorists from those cars and ferried them to shelters. This travelling public wasn't prepared for this challenge getting home for the holidays or finishing up Christmas shopping.

I began to see electronic message boards that spoke ominously about trip fortunes ahead. They displayed the same passage of “Heavy Snow, Avoid Travel, Seek Shelter!” Well, it’s a little late for that message. My trucker friends on the CB complained of jammed truck stops that were running out of food and fuel. Truckers were beginning to line their rigs up on the sides of the roadway and off ramps. Truckers are only allowed to drive a total of eleven hours a day.  When your time is up, you have to stop driving and shut down for a ten hour break.

The road surface was now converting from a slushy snow and wet arrangement to ice. The ride became extremely bumpy driving over chunks of ice we affectionately call moguls. Just like the kind you ski over, except bigger. I had racked up a grand total of 79 miles from the point of the four plus hour highway shutdown and was now in Lexington, Virginia. All the trucks and cars had come to another complete stop. Now what? I said out loud. The CB chatter now turned to a foreboding hill up ahead as slippery as a used car salesman on a third rate lot after a flood. In yet another traffic jam, drivers and passengers got out of their vehicles to see what the problem was now.  By this time, there were countless motorists searching for a place of personal relief. Truckers offered buckets and empty truck trailers to persons in need. Some auto drivers were beginning to panic for lack of fuel and food. This was turning into an ordeal for some.

The theme from Gilligan's Island popped into my head...."a three hour tour, a three hour tour..." The Virginia DOT was nowhere in sight. No plows, no salt, no nothing. I had never seen it this bad in recent times. Virginia was always fairly good at snow removal. I drove this route by car in the 90’s at the end of a snowstorm similar to this one. This amount of snowl didn’t seem that unmanageable to me. This DOT would be fired in Upstate New York. Virginia is a snow state; they should be prepared for this sort of thing. Sadly, thousands of motorists were left with the short end of this stick.

Word then came on the CB, several truckers and cars attempted the hill and slid into the guardrail in a crunch of metal. 911 was called, but no one came. With no authorities in sight, we truckers took matters into our own hands. Three rigs lined up blocking the highway so no one else could get by and suffer the same misfortune as the ones who attempted the hill. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries from the mishap down the hill.

The truckers gathered and plotted a course of action to get down this steep grade.  It was decided that we would send the trucks and cars down, one at a time with instructions to stay in the middle and don’t exceed 1 mile per hour. The middle truck behind me would come out of the three across line and follow me when I descended to the bottom of that roadway disguised as a slab of ice. Me and the Fat Cat were second in line, behind a power company truck. The power truck radioed that it was slushy at the bottom of the hill and to take it very slow. My truck has what they call a “Jake Brake” which is a type of brake that employs engine compression to slow and eventually stop the truck. It works without supplying any stopping force to the wheels. It’s great because I can reserve my air from braking and also avoid skidding by not applying pressure to those wheels. This was one time I was extremely glad I had this kind braking system. Thank you Mr. Jacobs for figuring that one out.

As I watched the power company truck disappear out of sight in front of me, my knuckles grew white gripping the big steering wheel. My thoughts raced with scenarios of doom on this highway as I prepared to descend this mighty grade. Once you start a slide on ice, there’s not much you can do to get out of it. Steering and braking disappear and then it’s up to the man upstairs.

I dropped Miss Fat Cat into the lowest gear possible and let my emergency spring brakes out. I usually start off in a higher gear, but not this time. My heart beat at an elevated rate as I eased her onto the hill. Perspiration rode my brow. Creeping down the decline at maybe 1 mile per hour, I could feel the slippery road surface from the tires right into my hands. If I went any faster, I would surely become another mangled storm statistic. I tried to keep in mind the slush from which I would gain traction at the bottom. I hoped the reports on the CB were correct.

I passed the crashed trucks on the way down, but couldn’t rubberneck it too much for fear of joining them. I caught a glimpse of a white late model Volvo in the mix. I talked the big Cat down the hill the whole way. “Come ‘on girl, I know you can do it.” There was no salt, no sand or cinders of any kind on this decline of treachery. My only way down was a steady hand, a “fully jaked” engine on the Caterpillar 500, a resistance to hitting the brakes and faith in God.

As I sensed the road evening out, I felt the wonderful slush they talked about. Me and the big Lady made it! I wanted to get out and kiss the big slurpee. The highway was still slippery and offered ice chunks to make the ride rough. The Welcome sign to West Virginia couldn’t have come soon enough and signaled better roads all the way into Pennsylvania. The remaining state road departments on the run had the interstate under control. I watched busy plows with salt spreaders clean up Old Man Winter’s gift. I got to my destination in one piece, only nineteen hours late. And yes, Natasha back at dispatch central said they wouldn’t count it against me. This trip took a total of thirty six hours to go 622 at an average of 17 miles per hour. I feel for the families who lost a family member, especially this close to Christmas. Wrecked cars and trucks can be fixed or be replaced. Injuries heal. Effects of some of those injuries can linger for a lifetime. But, lives are lost.

It’s been a crazy and bewildering few weeks of driving up and down the east coast in a variety of climates. This was the third snow storm I’ve been through, combined with a pleasant 82 degree stopover in South Florida. I thought about that as I sat in the truck stop here in Pennsylvania, peeling another seedless naval orange picked just over a week ago.