A week ago, I was driving home in a snowstorm that followed a rainstorm, so the snow was very slushy. As I was driving up a hill, I was sliding all over the place--I don't think I went straight at one point while I was going up. I never had a driving experience like that, so it got me thinking about the experiences I've had in cars that have gone sliding on snow and ice.
I have a very young memory of our car spinning around when I was probably three or four, but that might have simply been a U-turn.
One day in fifth grade, my mom was driving me and Hillary Ulmer to school in our blue Subaru. It wasn't snowy, but some snow had melted on the road and frozen again, so as we went down Marialana, my mom lost control of the car and nearly hit Debbie Pope, who was coming up the road. We hit the curb and the car quit working. Debbie stopped and asked if we were all right. We were fine, but we didn't know about the car. Hillary said, "Well, I'm not walking," and I thought that was a ridiculous thing to say, because if the car wasn't working, we had no other option, and we weren't super far from school anyway. But my mom started the car again, and it worked fine.
After we got our white Subaru, I remember a few times when we got stuck in the snow at the bottom of our driveway. One of these times was on Christmas Eve in 2000.
When I was in tenth grade, some days we would get rides from Wayne Christensen. He was apparently in a perpetual rush and would drive somewhat recklessly, not staying on his side of the road and going way over the speed limit. One snowy morning, he drove down Marialana and was angry that they hadn't plowed it yet, since it was the worst road in the snow. He was in too big a rush to take a different road. He began pumping the brakes and told us that the worst thing you could do is to slam on the brakes in the snow. When I asked my family about that, they said that it only applied to cars without anti-lock brakes, and that you never take Marialana in the snow.
On another occasion, it began snowing while we were in school, and Latecia Pope was driving us home. We cleared off her windows, and the snow was coming so rapidly that her rear windshield became completely snowed over while she was driving. When we got up to Raygene, she couldn't get up the steep part in the snow, so I had to get out and walk home, which was fine with me.
I didn't do much snow driving, but one morning I was driving to school and I slid as I was coming down to a stoplight near school.
Then on my mission, my first companion, Elder Chun, liked to pull the emergency brake on roads to turn around, rather than just doing a U-turn. You have to understand that in Spokane, they do a horrendous job of plowing roads. They just let the snow pack down, so the roads always have a slick surface. Elder Chun's method of turning around often made us end up stuck in snow berms, and I would have to get out and push, and sometimes other people would have to come help us too.
One time, we were visiting a family, but he missed the turn and we ended up going down an icy, hilly road called Deer Lane. It was so icy that we couldn't come up. I suggested that we go to the bottom of the road to look for an outlet (after all, we weren't far from a major highway), but he didn't think there was an outlet (and he was right). He asked me to get out and push, but when I pushed, I simply pushed myself away from the car, rather than pushing the car away from me. We did lots of praying and trying and pushing. Then he got an idea: On the side of the road, there were lots of pine needles that had fallen from the trees. He got the driver-side wheels on the needles and was able to get enough traction to drive off. Then we were able to use that experience in our lesson we were late to.
On another occasion, he went the wrong way, down a dead end, and people came to help push us back up the hill.
A year later, I was driving in the town of Ritzville, and the roads were coated with ice, I think because of fog. I was approaching an intersection and applied the brakes and couldn't stop; the car going the other way had to swerve to avoid me. Elder Wilson chastised me for not pumping the brakes, but I didn't understand why a brand-new 2008 vehicle didn't have anti-lock brakes.
One Saturday morning in December 2011, I was driving to my work at the Distribution Center, and as I was going down Raygene I slid into the curb. Everything was fine, but I was scared for the rest of the drive, and I did do some sliding.
I have had numerous times where the anti-lock brakes have come on when I've gone down Raygene. Times include the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 2010 and the Sunday after Christmas in 2014.
Then last Christmas, we had a dinner at the home of a bishopric counselor. It started snowing during dinner, and not wanting to get caught on his very steep hill in the snow, I left early, and my ABS came on and stayed on for a rather long time. I was relieved when I got off that hill.
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