A Patch of Ice

Its shocking to drive around a blind corner in the middle of the night to find a jeep upside down in the middle of the highway.
Its happened to me three or four times now, stumbling upon a vehicle that has just flipped on icy mountain highways. But a jeep? I thought they were 4x4s, easier to drive in the snow than a normal car. Well perhaps this driver hadn’t had the time to Read More on how to fully equip a car like this to drive in these conditions.
It was eighteen degrees last night as I cruised into my home town near midnight. It had snowed two nights before and the roads were very icy. I had been following the jeep wrangler for a while, I was quite a ways behind him, taking it slow, more tired then anything. I was more concerned with laying my head down on my pillow then the slippery road conditions.
I turned the corner by the gas station and could make out a figure waving dark arms at me in the freezing silent night. The vehicle that lay flipped in my lane I couldn’t even distinguish as the blue jeep I had been following just a minute ago. Suddenly I was wide awake again.
I pulled up beside the jeep and asked the lady inside if she was all right. She was trying to pull herself out through the broken windows and she kind of muttered that she thought she was okay. As anyone who has ever been injured in a car accident will tell you, sometimes adrenaline kicks in, and you do not feel any pain until much later, so I was very concerned about her wellbeing. I frantically searched the car for my cell phone, it had just been beside me a minute ago and then of course my phone froze up as I tried to dial 911, while hoping a sheriff would appear on this deserted mountain night. I parked my car, flashers blazing up the highway from the wreck, hoping to alert on coming traffic of the wreck in the middle of the highway. I stood in the cold, shivering in my sweat shirt, on the frozen highway, waving my arms as another jeep came sliding towards me on the empty highway. Please stop, please stop, I thought to myself, seeing his tires locked up and hearing them crunching over the ice.
I explained to the kids in the jeep the situation with the rolled jeep around the corner as I told the 911 operator the details and she assured me there was a sheriff on the way.
As I stood there on the dark highway under a million stars, I was kicking myself, thinking I should have seen if the girl needed help getting out of the jeep. There were two guys down the highway with her, I guess they were capable of helping her. I was also mad at myself that my flashlight seemed to be missing, right when I needed it.
I stood in the frigid winter night in the mountain silence for ten minutes, and never heard a sound, besides the wind whispering through the pines. After ten minutes of no traffic and no noise what so ever, I figured the sheriff must have shown up, this town isn’t that big. I pulled my shivering self back into my Subaru, counting my blessings that wasn’t me that rolled tonight. I was so tired driving home, I was driving really slow on the icy highway, but all it takes is hitting the right patch of ice and the right embankment.