To boldly go where no man has gone before

A couple weekends ago, Jason invited me to head up to Idaho to play in the powder on some snowmobiles. Me likey!

It was a splendid day. There is such a rush from an exhilarating ride through fresh powder. You bounce smoothly as you hit the bumps and snow feels like velvet as it flies up around you. The one problem I experienced in the fresh snow was sinking when I slowed down while trying to turn to follow Jason up a hill. My machine was buried to the top of the seat.

You can see from the photo how deep the machine was buried. I started digging. And digging. Jason ran down the hill and together we dug and pulled and pushed. This went on for what seemed like an eternity until we had a small sloping hole on the downhill slope side of the 500-pound machine. Pretty tired by this time, Jason finally yanked at the front ski while I revved the engine. Together, we broke free! But Jason warned me that we only allowed one “stuckie” each for the day and I had just had mine.

The rest of the ride was free of “stuckies”. Every time I would feel my machine start to sink in the cottony snow, I would say out loud “Oh, no you don’t! Not again!” (I tend to talk to myself out loud a lot while riding. Mostly I squeal “Yippee” or “Wahoo” when I come off a sweet jump but sometimes I have to let the machine know who is boss.), stand up on my machine and gun the engine.

Since we started in the early morning, we headed home in the early afternoon so we could spend the rest of the day celebrating Jason’s wife’s, Colie, birthday. We loaded our machines onto the trailer and headed down the icy mountain road. Just as we hit the final curve, we felt the Tahoe slide and then the weight of the trailer follow into the slide. Jason corrected and tried to come out of the slide, which happened only momentarily. The weight of trailer combined with the slick road was too much for the Tahoe and we slide over the edge.

If you have ever been in an accident, you know how many thoughts rapidly shoot through your brain. Here are our thoughts as we slid over the edge:

My version: I hear Jason mutter, “Dang it, the trailer…shoot!” I see Jason hanging on to the steering wheel to try to guide the Tahoe. I feel the Tahoe sliding, feel the weight of the trailer grab the Tahoe and throw us off the road. I grab on to the bar above the car window and glance out the window to see that if the truck rolls, we will end up in the creek bed. The thought of being dunked in icy cold creek water pushes away any other thoughts of getting hurt.

Jason’s version: He knew we wouldn’t be crushed if the truck rolled because of the roll bar. However, he was worried that if the truck rolled, we wouldn’t make it home in time to celebrate Colie’s birthday.

The snow was deep enough that the momentum of the truck buried the tires in the snow, thus preventing the truck from rolling down the hill. Yet, the truck was still sideways at a 60-degree angle. Jason instructed me to climb over him and exit the truck. Trust me, this was a difficult process. The truck door was heavy and I had trouble holding it open while I tried to get leverage against the slick center console with my wet boots. As soon as I was out, Jason jumped out too. My cell phone was in my backpack, which had been hurled to the floor of the backseat of the truck and buried by another backpack. Neither of us felt safe getting back into the truck, so I found a long ice scrapper and used that to pull out my backpack. As we hiked to the farm down the road, Jason immediately called Colie to relay the news. At the farm, a little old lady told us the phone number of the only tow-truck driver in town which we called and then waited by the Tahoe. Several passerbys slowed as they drove by. After a quick chuckle, each onlooker offered the phone number of the tow-truck driver that was already on his way. One amused observer informed us that we should pick a different parking spot next time and then laughed out loud as his own joke. We laughed right along with him.

Apparently, this particular curve caused many accidents. After about fifteen minutes, the tow-truck driver arrived and assured us that he could pull the truck and trailer out. Then we waited for another fifteen minutes for the police to arrive. Law enforcement was required to be on site to block the road while the tow-truck driver worked his magic. The trailer came out first and then the tow-truck driver attached one strap to the left front truck tire and one strap to the left back truck tire. Watching the process of pulling the truck out made me cringe a little. The front tire looked like it would pop off the truck. But the tow-truck guy knew what he was doing and the truck came out in one piece. After paying the fee, we were on our way safely back to Colie’s birthday party.

*you can see from the tire tracks that the weight of the trailer literally pulled us at 90 degree angle

*the barbed wire fence helped keep the sleds on the trailer

*the tow-truck driver pulling out the Tahoe

They say that hindsight is 20/20. We were definitely watched over by a higher power that day. Here are some examples of the guidance and protection we received that day:

• As we were driving together the day before the ride, Colie requested that Jason drive slowly on the winding curves we would weave through the following day. After securing a promise from Jason, Colie requested that I also keep an eye out for the treacherous curves we would encounter. The day of the mishap, Jason actually was driving slowly but due to the rainy weather, the roads were completely iced over.
• When we started going through the final canyon on our way to pick up the snowmobiles, Jason advised me to turn off my cell phone because the battery would simply die as it continuously searched for a signal. My initial thought response was that I didn’t even care because no one would call me…most people knew I was snowmobiling. But I reached over and powered down my phone anyway. This simple act provided us a phone in our time of need.
• Jason offered a prayer to plead for our safety prior to our leaving to snowmobile. After the Tahoe went over the edge, Jason mentioned several times how grateful he was that we had remembered to pray for safety that morning.
• Every witness to the stuck Tahoe made a comment about how lucky we were. Ten feet behind our location was an enormous tree, where a majority of vehicles ended up crushed if they slid. Ten feet in front of our location was a steep drop and we would have certainly rolled. The tow-truck driver observed that he had never seen any vehicle end up in such a convenient location.
• Because we only had to drive about ten minutes from the house to the area to unload the snowmobiles, we didn’t take the time to tie down the sleds. The snowmobile skies flew forward through the iron grate on the front on the trailer, and that, along with the barbed wire fence we almost slide into, prevented the sleds from sliding completely off the trailer.
• The Tahoe stopped just inches from the barbed wire fence and consequently no damage whatsoever was done to the truck.
• Mom’s prompting
  
  Jason’s “stuckie” experience was by far scarier than mine and I am so grateful that we were watched over that day.