Did a road-trip to the '98 Alamo Bowl with college friends, four of us in two cars. On the way back we had to navigate through a major winter storm, that was just rain in Texas, and got more and more sloppy and frozen the further north we went.
Somewhere in Oklahoma as I recall, on a straight and level stretch of interstate, traffic was going 15 MPH in freezing rain. There were tons of cars that had slipped off the road, not the least of which were a few SUVs and a sports car that had blown past us previously. But we were from The North, driving in ice and snow is not a problem, so we keep going.
Not long later, with all the cars in the interstate behaving, no passing, no idiots, no turns or banking in the road, everyone going the same speed. No reason to turn, speed up, slow down, whatever. The minivan two cars ahead of us just does a 360 and goes upside down into the ditch on the right, for no reason whatsoever. Nothing made it maneuver, it was as if the hand of god reached down and tossed it to one side. That was a reality check, after that we got out at the next exit and got some Waffle House, we weren't going to get ahead of that storm anyways.
Later on on the same trip, we somehow made it to Indiana without incident, going north on a two lane paved State Road that was probably closed, but we didn't get the word. There were 7 foot high drifts on the road, but we were too close to getting back to Purdue to stop now. There was no one else on the road, so we just ran down the center instead of staying in our lane and plowed through the drifts, going from about 45 MPH when the lead car hit the drift, slowing to about 15 MPH when the lead car made it through to the other side, and the trailing car would just follow in its wake before the wind could close up the hole in the drift.
That worked until the lead car started overheating due to too much snow in the radiator, and we had to dig the snow out of it. I found that very ironic, that ice in the radiator was causing it to overheat, but of course it makes sense. So after that, the car I was in, that my friend was driving, a Volkswagen Jetta if I recall correctly, had to take the lead. It was surreal, that we had to go fast to make it through each drift. The way we were completely blind as snow was flying over the windshield, and miraculously we'd make it to the other side of the drift before we were completely stopped, then we had to really step on it to get enough speed before the next drift. Fortunately the front grill of the VW happened to not allow snow into the radiator, so we continued like this for quite a while.
Then we saw headlights on the side of the road in the distance. That caused us to slow down to make sure we wouldn't hit them, and as a result we couldn't plow through the entire drift, and got stuck. We got stuck in the same drift they were stuck in. If they weren't there, I'm sure we would have made it through that snow drift as well. And then we saw it was a state trooper.
And this part you might not believe, but its absolutely true. He got stuck in the drift, went out to his trunk to get a shovel to free himself, got the trunk open and proceeded to drop his keys in the snow. He then found out he was locked out of his vehicle in a full-on blizzard at 10 in the evening. If he didn't have the trunk open, he might have been totally screwed, but he at least had access to some of his gear, including a flashlight. So we all searched around until we found his keys (And one of us found them, not him, haha). Then we dug each other out. He didn't admonish us for being on the road, he just said thanks and we went on our way. The whole time there wasn't one other vehicle on that road.
As it turned out, that was the last big snow drift, or the first one from the cop's perspective I suppose. My friend and I got back home safe, and I found out later my other two friends in the other car finally got stuck 10 feet from where they wanted to park on road in front of their apartment. They were too damn tired to do anything about it. That drive back is legendary among the four of us to this day, we upset Kansas State, the #4 team in the nation at the Alamo, and on the drive back rescued a cop who might have frozen to death in a blizzard. Successful road trip indeed!
