The Right Time to Gloat and Spike the Ball (ST#8)

There is a stretch of road leading out of Waldorf, MD from Highway 5 to Accokeek Road that I often used as a means of bypassing a particularly nasty stretch of construction when I was commuting over into Virginia.  In nice weather, Gardiner Road was a beautiful drive through a thicket of woods down into a valley, across a single lane bridge, out across a long flat at the edge of a wide meadow, and then back up out of the valley.

For years, that little one lane bridge worked fine for the light traffic the road carried, and those who use it knew that after a couple of days of rain, the normally shallow, slow-running Mattawoman Creek would rise up and spread out so that while that little one lane bridge was still higher than the surface of the creek, the road leading to it would be under water, often as deep as a foot or more.  A few years after this story happened, that little one lane bridge was replaced, but the creek still covers the roadway after a serious rain.

My tale, though, deals with snow rather than water.  It was in the winter, one of those between between 1990 and 1994, construction on US-5 in Prince Georges County, MD made my commute a nightmare, so I was using Gardiner Road almost every day.  For what it was worth, I was driving a Dodge Turbo Shadow four door sedan, a rather slick little car with enough turbo boost to easily get me in trouble, but operating stingily enough to qualify as an economy car.

Snow in southern Maryland comes often enough that folks all own snow shovels, but infrequently enough that a whole lot of them forget how to drive on snow between storms.  That, and the penchant for many those in the southern three counties to drive big pickup trucks with four-wheel drive and big knobby tires that sing themselves bald on the normally bare pavement they encountered in their day-to-day operation.

I got up early that morning because snow had been forecast and I knew my sixty-mile commute was going to take much longer than normal.  After a bowl of oatmeal and some coffee, I cleaned the snow off my car and ventured forth.  The roads were snow-covered because the plows hadn't yet rolled and at that time of day, traffic was still pretty light.  My little car featured front-wheel drive and had decent tires, so as long as I was gentle with the throttle and kept the turbo boost off, we moved pretty well.  A couple of times I blipped the throttle to test the traction and was immediately aware that traction was nearly non-existent.

Out on Route 5 I made the decision to take Gardiner Road rather than go through the construction zone, and soon I was gingerly guiding my little car down the hill though the woods and out onto the plain and across that one-lane bridge.  There had been enough traffic and the vehicles had been going slowly enough that the snow hadn't been blown off the road, but rather had been packed down.

There is a bend in the road a short ways after the bridge and when I came around that bend, there were tail lights and brake lights all up and down the road.  I pulled to a stop at the edge of the road behind a rather battered pickup and got out to see what had happened.  It was dark, around 5:30 in the morning, the snow was still coming down, but only in a whispering flurry.

The fellow in the battered truck was out, standing in the road, and I joined him.  In front of us for about 50 yards were vehicles parked on both side of the road, and further along the road, up the hill, were even more at the edge of the road.  Running along the road between the rows of cars and trucks, a big pickup with one of those above-the-roof light bars lighting the falling snow more than the road and the full throated exhaust of a V-8 engine snarled as the driver gave it too much gas and lost traction, apparently on all four wheels at once.  We could hear those big knobby tires as they spun, then the rear of the truck began sliding towards the ditch.  Sure enough, the rest of the truck and the driver, now just a passenger along for the ride, violently slid into the ditch, threatened to roll over, then righted itself.  The lights bounced as the driver tried to gain control, but by then, his truck had bogged down and he was just one more unsuccessful good old boy stuck in the ditch on Gardiner Road.

About that time, a pickup with a sliding rear window began backing towards our vantage point and we wisely gave him all the road he wanted.  As he passed us, one arm up on the back of the seat as he watched his progress through the open rear window, we heard him shout, "I'm gonna make that sumbitch."

When he got back far enough, he stopped for a moment, then off he went, tires spinning and his arms sawing the steering wheel, truck yawing much of the way, either to port or starboard.  He continued on up the hill past the others that were in the ditch and we really thought he'd make it until we heard the telltale increase in engine speed and saw him and his truck slide slowly into the rather deep ditch.

Now I'm standing there in a suit and overcoat while all around me are men dressed for a day in the outdoors, all of them taller that I by a substantial margin, but I looked at them, took off my overcoat, and claimed the road for myself, "I'm next."  I knew something they didn't.  I knew my little Dodge Shadow had decent traction, but that the turbo could easily negate any traction if I let it come on.  I knew something else, too.  I'd grown up in New Hampshire and I've also lived in northern Europe, North Dakota, Colorado, and Maine.  I've driven in snow enough to be familiar with the dos and don'ts.  One of the biggest don'ts has to do with suddenness.  Make no sudden moves, neither with the steering wheel nor the gas pedal.

I eased my Dodge out onto the roadway, gave a couple of toots on its rather anemic horn to let the others know I was on my way, and I let the car slowly accelerate.  By the time I'd reached the first vehicles that had slid off the road, I was up to the top speed I figured I'd need.   Keeping my foot steady on the throttle and my hands with a firm, but not death grip, hold on the steering wheel, my car and I smoothly passed a couple more stranded vehicles, past the truck with the light bar, and finally, past the truck with the sliding rear window.  I knew the road well enough to know that after the last little knoll, it flattened out and I'd be on my way.  By the time I reached that last little rise, I was perspiring with that same feeling I know athletes have when there is only a couple of minutes on the clock, they have the ball, and they are ahead.  They want to gloat, but in football, just as in snowy hill climbing, it isn't wise to gloat until you've actually won.

When my car reached the top of that last rise, I knew I'd made it and I gloated.  I spiked the ball.  Oh, they may not have known I'd spiked it - all they heard was that beep beep from my automobile's horn.  I gloated almost all the rest of my trip that day.  Hell, I'm still gloating.