2012: Driving Into The Blizard

The mathematical formula seemed simple: instead of A-B then B-C, we would do B-C then A-B. instead of sleeping and then driving through a snow storm, we would drive until we hit the snow storm and then sleep. It sounded like a good logical plan. Except, we had slept less than 5 hours of the past 48.

Five people packing for a 12 day journey takes a lot of luggage! And since it is winter in the North and summer-like in the south, we need to pack for multiple seasons. The result was a van busting 35 bags! All packed and ready to go at 4am.

Next stage of the plan? Wake up at 6am (we would sleep later) and leave. That brilliant planning was lost when we slept through the alarm clock. We didn't wake until 8am when the telephone wrung. It was one group of our friends. They decided to wait out the storm in New York and leave Thursday evening. That was a luxury we didn't have - we have reservations and plans in Boca Raton for Saturday. We needed to leave. And our coalition of early departers was falling apart.

9am, now 3 hours behind schedule. I started loading the 35 bags into our mini-van. The storm was set to hit our town at 3pm, but I could already see snow flurries in the air! It wasn't until 11am that the van was packed, the kids were awake and loaded into the van, and we were headed down the road. It was then we heard from the second group of friends: they decided to wait the storm out too! We were on our own. And the storm, still four hours away, was swirling on the southern horizon.

We passed out of New York and into the Allegany Mountain range in Pennsylvania. It was in the mountains that we hit snow. The roads quickly covered and cars were fish tailing and flying off the road. Traffic bunched up and slowed to fifteen miles an hour. We were deep in the blizzard on the side of the mountains. There were no lanes and tractor trailers seemed to only obey the laws of tonnage. Repeatedly we would get stuck behind a slow moving car crawling uphill and have to switch into the dangerous passing lane to get around. All the while I wondered if that guard rail would really keep my van from tumbling down the side of the mountain if I lost control. After 90 minutes of white knuckle driving we made it to the middle of Pennsylvania, a town named Williamsport. Williamsport was our first goal, our second goal was to continue to Pennsylvania's southern border. We decided not to press our luck and pulled into a Williamsport Holiday Inn.

At 3:30 we were comfortably in our hotel room and immediately turned the room into an arcade to wait out the storm: Wii, computers, droids, and I-devices for everyone.

Our plan was to relax, get to bed early, and head out early tomorrow. We should wake up to the tail end of the storm and just need to drive through some freezing rain and high winds. It sounds like a perfect plan, what could go wrong?