Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Driving in a Storm!

So I made kind of a bad judgment last night. I decided to drive from my House in Roy to my moms house in West Valley. I am spending Thanksgiving with them this year while Hyatt is in Afghanistan. When I started to drive it was snowing lightly but the wind was blowing pretty strong. As I got on the freeway it started to snow harder. I was very cautious about how fast I was driving as it grew darker. There was not very many cars on the road so I didn't have to worry to much about staying in any lines. I got on to Legacy highway and the sun had gone down and it was almost impossible to see because the snow was now coming down extremely fast and there was lots of it. It got to the point where I could barely tell where the road ended and the shoulders started. It was getting bad and there was a build up of sleet on my windshield wipers. I had about a 3 in. space where I could still see out my window so I pulled over and cleaned off my windshield wipers. That helped till I got to about the I-80 west exit on I-215 and then it happened. The Sleet build up on the windshield wiper was so bad that my windshield wiper stuck to the frozen sleet on the left side of my windshield and Broke. I carefully pulled off to the side of the road and got out to try and switch the passenger one to the drivers side. As I was trying to take off the other one a Highway Patrol Officer stopped and came to help me. She was able to get off the other windshield wiper and we went around to the other side of the car. As she was putting the windshield wiper on for me, that one broke too. I didn't know what to do. I thought about calling my mom to come get us but the Officer said that in a storm like that we couldn't just leave the car there. She suggested turning up the defroster all the way and continuing to drive really slowly. She said that she would follow me till I got to a place to get new windshield wipers. So I started to drive and I couldn't see at all. But then I had an Idea. I rolled down my window and took the windshield wiper and used it to wipe off the windshield with my hand. so for about 6 miles I drove rolling my window down about every 30 sec. to wipe off my windshield. A frozen Arm and 6 miles later I pulled into a checker Auto parts and bought new windshield wipers. I know that I would have not made it to my moms house if I wouldn't have said a prayer before we left. I feel blessed that I was able to make it "Home" safely. I know that the Lord gives us trials so that we can learn. The Lesson I learned was... Don't try to drive in a snow storm. And Always try and have an extra pair of Windshield Wipers with you when you are going to try to drive through a storm.

3 comments:

Christy said...

WOW Em! I'm glad that you made it safely!

Ryan & Hayley said...

I know it probably wasn't funny at the time, but it made me laugh picturing you wiping the window and driving at the same time while in a snow storm. Glad you were okay!

McDougal Family said...

It wasn't really funny at the time. But it is now. The guy at the auto parts store had a good laugh when I pulled in. I thought myself pretty clever to have thought of that though. and I'm sure that the people that saw me doing it laughed too. :)