Rescue 401

Disclaimer: No one and nothing was harmed in the playing out of this little nightmare.

Last night, on our way home from Ottawa, the weather suddenly turned bad. The vast majority of vehicles on the 401 behaved responsibly. They slowed down, moved over to the right, and gave the person ahead of them a lot of space. I say the vast majority because the message seemed to have escaped 2 transport drivers who took the new found free lanes as license to claim the road in its entirety. The first one whipped by us, scaring us enough to decide that the next exit was the one for us. Unfortunately, the transport behind the previous one wasn't so nice. It started to zoom by us, and then, I guess, forgot we were there and proceeded to run us off the road!

David managed to avoid being hit by the truck, but that was the best he could do. Breaking caused us to fish-tail and then spin out of control. We ended up in the ditch facing the highway. Thankfully the snow was soft and deep so we stopped almost as soon as we went in. Somehow we managed to avoid all the other cars and the sign posts that lined the freeway. Our car and its passengers were shaken up but unharmed. Well, those of us in the front seats were shaken up. The little one in the back was watching a movie and failed to notice anything was going on.

The weather was getting worse, but David, being the trooper he is, tried to dig and push us out. A good Samaritan even stopped to help us out. But with no luck. We were stuck good! We were fortunate enough to have road-side assistance so I called. The lady on the other end of the line was very helpful. She was calm and helped us to figure out approximately where we were.

The tow truck came fairly quickly. I say fairly because as you stare at 401 traffic barely a few feet away, knowing what just happened to you, quick is a relative term. In real time, probably 20 minutes, which is excellent considering we had little idea where we were, and it was probably bordering on zero-visibility.

Within minutes the tow truck had us out of the ditch and back on our way. Again, I say minutes, but ask David and I'm sure he'll tell you hours because he was the one standing in the middle of 401 traffic, in the dark, dressed entirely in black, in treacherous weather, holding a little, glowing red stick while our car was extracted.

We pulled off the 401 at the next exit and went in search of a hotel room for the night. Unfortunately, being in the middle of nowhere, that search took an hour or two. All the while Meghan watched movies, blissfully unaware of what just happened. It wasn't until we pulled into another hotel (having stayed in one in Ottawa the previous night) instead of our driveway, that she got upset.

Meghan spent the next several hours mad that we had lied to her. She wanted to go home like we promised earlier that day. Well into the wee hours of the morning we decided that we were too tired to continue pacifying her (with cookies, movies, and the like) and chose to just let her cry. We apologize to the people around us, but sometimes you just have to let a child throw a temper-tantrum. Eventually she fell asleep.

Having lived to tell the tale, I would like to thank:
~ Mom & Dad Schwindt for giving us the means to afford a new car. I'm not sure we would have been so fortunate in the Sunfire.
~ Hyundai for building a stable tin box and for including road-side assistance with their lease.
~ the good Samaritan that tried to help push us out
~ the roadside assistance lady for keeping us calm and for helping to figure out where we were
~ the tow truck driver for finding us and getting us out so quickly
~ the motorists that didn't run over David as he stood in the middle of traffic with a little red stick
~ the plow drivers who kept the back roads clear so we could find a hotel room in the middle of nowhere