Hullo, Ditch!
When I woke up this morning in west central South Dakota, it was snowing. This is not an unusual thing for the mountain time zone in January.
I went about the business of starting my day and got rolling up the on ramp toward the freeway.
The first thing of note was that the flag above the fuel stop where'd I'd spent the night was not a deceitful piece of cloth: it was enormously windy. This is also not an unusual thing for the mountain time zone in January.
What was unusual was the temperature. Normally in January, you can expect temps to top out below freezing during the day and dip into single digits (Fahrenheit) at night...with some typical wild swings to the cold and to the warm. Today was on the warm side. It was 33. For those of you not acquainted with serious winter driving, 30-35 degrees is the shit zone for temp when it comes to the combination of precipitation and road surface. Salt will melt frozen water down into the 20s, but this requires both direct sunlight and a lack of nature attempting to replenish the loss. I had neither.
At first (say, about 20 miles) I faced only the vicious cross wind and some sleety snow. As things progressed, however, it got precipitously worse. I was heading west, ergo, into whatever weather was rolling my direction. This always means that you get to experience the nastiness of the storm's wrath in a sort of fast-forward. If you were sitting in your living room, it would take 2 or 3 hours for the 1/4 inch of slushy underlayer and 2 inches of snow to settle in. Plowing west at 60mph packs this transition into about 30 minutes.
I had made a few passes already (South Dakota is mercifully free of traffic in a way most states east of the Mississippi could only fantasize) and the left lane had been dicey but usable. Somewhere between my last successful pass and the next one I was about to make, the quality of that left lane deteriorated dramatically.
Might I remind you that there was a right to left (north) wind blowing at a steady 30mph and gusting into the middle 40s.
I came up on a big truck that had its hazards on. I was still making progress at about 55, given the pretty fair quality of the right lane. A truck with hazards on that's still making headway in a travel lane means one thing: "I'm going way slower than posted speed, DO NOT REAR END ME!"
"All right," said I, "I shall not rear end you, brother at arms, and shall merely overtake you in a polite and gentle way." While I noticed the sudden downturn in conditions, I judged that his 35mph might be a bit slow for my tastes.
What I did next was not entirely ill-advised, but it was certainly not as conservative and well-tempered as it could have been. Without fully slowing to match speed with the truck I wanted to pass (in order to, say, assess the situation and make a reasoned judgement about the sanity of passing) I engaged my left blinker and gently slid toward the snow-covered left lane. The moment my left steer tire touched that demon semen, all control of the truck was ceded from me to Mistress Nature and God, who must have had a momentary doubt about the value of leaving a silly git like me alive up to that point.
I shall here recount my thought process and my visual recollection of what followed in as near perfect frenetic detail as I can.
*ahem*
Bad idea! Back in the right lane!
Nope, steering doesn't work. Brakes! Brakes help!
NO! NO BRAKES! Jackknifing happens with brakes!
I'm going into the median, no helping it.
My day is over, shit.
Maybe my life is over!
**I frantically assess the median for topography**
No. Not deep enough to kill me. Not dying.
Rolling? Will I roll it?
**I assess the topography again**
No, don't think I'm rolling. Too shallow.
Will I notice if I roll? Or will I just find myself on my side suddenly?
**Perhaps 2 seconds since I lost control have elapsed**
Here's the edge!
**The cabin is filled with the soft, earthy crashing sound that can only be made when a large vehicle is traveling where it shouldn't**
Steer for the middle! Don't roll!
**Completely off the road, headed for the trough of the median**
Where's the trailer?
**At this point, I'm more watching myself handle this situation that consciously handling it, therefore, nothing that follows is bragging because I don't feel as though it was actually me doing it. I actually manage to glance at my mirrors and check that the trailer was in line...in the middle of the ditch.**
Okay, bottom. Upright. Good. Still moving? STILL MOVING! Save it? DON'T GET STUCK!
**I glance at oncoming traffic to see how far I am from running up onto their side.**
Gearing! Don't stall the engine!
**I punch the throttle and shove the shifter out of 8th**
Speed! What's my speed??
**I look at the speedometer. 28mph. Not a doubt in my mind. 28.**
6th High!
**Snap the splitter forward and throttle up to match RPM to speed, dumping the truck into an appropriate gear. I am still steering a truck down the middle of a 10 foot deep median.**
Gear! Good! Throttle, keep the throttle, use the momentum!
**I actually check my right mirror at this point to ensure that no traffic is in the space I aim to return to on my side of the freeway.**
Back up the embankment! Knife at it! Dive for it! Too shallow and you'll crap out or roll over!
**Hammering the throttle and then feathering it to avoid total traction loss, I cut back for the embankment**
Do we have it? WE DO! WE'RE UP! HOLY SHIT, I'M NOT STUCK! Oo! Straighten out! Keep on the road! Where's the trailer?
**Trailer is still behind me**
Slow! Slow. Truck still in front of me. No hitting.
**Strange ballet of braking and throttle to slow the truck but avoid jacknife.**
Did that just happen? I think it did!
**At this point I notice myself laughing maniacally.**
For lack of better idea I then settled in behind the truck I'd originally intended to pass (and who must have witnessed that entire event in his mirror) and just kept going. I say he must have seen it because he promptly exited at the next opportunity, which was only maybe a half mile down the road.
For my part I was laughing like a mad hatter and simultaneously feeling out the truck for damage. Blown tires, broken fiberglass, the kind of thing you'd expect from a vehicle that just took a ditch tour. Nothing felt wrong, and sure enough, when I pulled over in a better weather zone after about 40 minutes, the only evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened was a bit of grass thrown up on the body near the steps to the driver's door.
I didn't do it, but every bit of me wanted to grab the cb once I'd righted the ship and shout, "Tell me you saw that! Tell me somebody saw that shit! That was amazing!"
By rights, trucks don't go off the road like that and come back on. They go off the road and stay off the road. I have no idea how I didn't snag on something or just get stuck, and I cannot and will not take credit for the driving instincts that kicked in that allowed me back up on the road. That kind of thing is just...built in. And the best I can do is be thankful that it was built in to me.
From engaging my blinker to back in the right lane as if I hadn't just been 35 tons of metal in the grass cannot have been more than 10 seconds, if that. But it's equal portions of my day in my mind when set against the 600 miles I proceeded to drive after it happened. Now, if I open the trailer doors on Tuesday morning and find the load completely intact, unmoved, and undamaged, I am the most blessed man on earth.
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