Ice

Ryan came back to town this weekend for his brothers birthday. We made plans to hang out Saturday night, so I spent a lot of Friday and Saturday cleaning and preparing to rock out.

Chris C, Jessie, Francesca, Lindsay, Ryan and I all ate Domino's, watched ICP and Aphex Twin videos and played Rock Band. Eventually, after Chris and Jessie took off and Francesca and Lindsay started surfing the internet together, Ryan and I passed the controller back and forth, racking up some high scores in Pacman: Championship Edition DX. Pacman: CE DX is amazing. Totally and utterly outstanding. It's instantly one of my favorite Arcade games ever, and even one of my favorite games of the year. Ryan is, as expected, supernaturally good at it, too. Thanks to his high scores, we cleared all the Achievements in one sitting. They're admittedly really easy, but it would have taken me some time without Ryan's asbergers-level focus.

Eventually it was time to call it a night. Ryan and Francesca needed a ride home, so at about 2:30 AM we headed out. It must have been raining, because when we walked outside, the whole city was covered with super-clear, super slick ice. It was hard to walk to the car, and I knew I was in for a bad drive. And I was totally right.

Even going sub-10 MPH speeds, it was impossible to not lock up and skid. I inched along as Ryan directed me to his brother's house in Dinky Town. We decided to skip the freeway and take the back-roads and it's a great thing we did. As we passed over the freeway, there was nothing but red brake-lights as far as you could see. Keep in mind it's 2:30 AM.

Things went slowly but smoothly until we got to Dinky Town. We saw some fishtailing and skidding but nothing major. But there were some windy hills in Ryan's brother's neighborhood. As we climbed the first hill, we saw a group of guys standing around a stranded car on the side of the road. When I got near the top, I lost all traction. I helplessly sat there as my car stopped moving forward, and started sliding backward down the hill, and spinning until we were perpendicular in the road. Thankfully there were no parked cars that far up the road, so we didn't hit anything. If anyone had been parked on the side of the road, we would have surely hit them.

I decided not to fight it and just let me car continue turning until I was facing down hill, and we went around to find a lesser-incline. We did, but as we approached the house on a windy hill with a slight downhill slope to it, it was impossible to keep any traction. I was going less than 5 MPH, but my car still just started coasting sideways to the right, until we ran into the curb.

Ryan finally got out and almost fell over on the ice. Francesca and I took off on our own, unfamiliar with the area and scared as hell.

We came back to the first hill, but this time from the top. I needed to go down it, but by now there were 3 cars stranded, one obviously had came from where I was at the moment, and had coasted into a parked truck. I didn't know where I was going, but I went straight and skipped the hill. Francesca used my phone's GPS to try to figure out how to get home, but police had shut down some of the streets, and the entrance to the freeway, so we kept hitting dead-ends. Finally we found Washington Ave and took it all the way downtown, and took 3rd Ave to Francesca's house. Downtown was fine, they had been salting the roads and things seemed stable.

As soon as we crossed 35W, though, things got real icy again. I saw a group of people get in their cars and pull out behind me. They rode my ass and I pulled over to they them pass. Sure enough, at the first intersection, they went skidding right through into the crosswalk curb...

Once Franceca was home we started texting and calling Ryan and Lindsay to let them know we were almost safe. I still had to get home, but it wasn't a problem. There were a lot of cars stuck on Hiawatha over the lake Street bridge, but the weather seemed to be warming up a bit and I made it without any problems.

All in all, what should have been a 20-30 minute roundtrip ended up taking closer to 1 hour and 45 minutes. I got home at about 4 am, and played a little Baldur's Gate II to calm my nerves before going to sleep.

Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Check this CNN article and video. It was nuts. 370 accidents in the Twin Cities in one night!

Daaaaamn.

Today was a low-key day. Lindsay and I ran some errands and went book shopping. We got some lunch and pie, and I've played some games, done some art, and watched the new-ish Star Trek movie.

Good times.