And I lived to tell this tale

The scrapblog editor's hands have been so sore this week that she can't grip anything, though she finally can type again. Here is why. Day 1: Wichita to Topeka Early on Saturday, Dec. 22, I said goodbye to Chats and Michael in Andover, Kan., and hopped into my little red Mazda 3 to head back to Minnesota. It was the first full day of winter, but their lawn was green. An icy rain was beginning to fall, and 2 to 3 inches of snow were forecast, so I noted that it might take me longer than Mapquest's predicted nine hours to get home (it had taken me exactly nine hours to drive there a few days before). Three hours later, I had only one thought: I would be lucky to get through the day alive. The rain had turned to driving sleet that had coated Interstate 70 and every car in ice. I was creeping along at about 5 miles per hour, occasionally encountering a similarly petrified fellow motorist, some of whom were peering through blurry windows from the ditches. Ice caked the windshield and wipers. Finally I pulled over onto the shoulder, thinking, There is no way I can drive any farther. I'll just sit here until it eases. I pulled a blanket from the back seat into the front and took stock of my survival kit: lots of warm clothes, a nearly full tank of gas, five CDs of excellent rock 'n' roll, three cans of Tab and several exotic chocolates for Noah's stocking. Not bad! But I was scared. At any moment a snowblind driver might plow into me. And as the car windows became opaque with snow and ice, claustrophobic panic set in. Every once in a while I'd jump out, shoving the door open against ice and screeching wind, to uncover a window. I began to realize, I can't do this. I have to move. I began to drive again, creeping along, pulling over often to deice the wipers. A few other drivers were doing the same, though most had given up and parked on the shoulder, apparently better equipped psychologically than I was to handle being inside an entombed car. This went on for almost two hours. Finally I got to an exit that didn't say "No services," not that you could even read the ice-coated sign. I crept off the exit. At the end of the exit the thing I'd been fearing for all those miles happened -- my car fishtailed in a circle and smashed rear-first into a guardrail. Thankfully, I didn't hit any other cars. I maneuvered around and turned right, heading toward a hotel sign I could barely see through the sleet. I got the last hotel room available in western Topeka, I heard later. Everyone else after me ended up in church basements. I-70 and other nearby highways were closed. Turns out the people I had coffee with in the lobby of the Sleep Inn, all of us pouring out our stories of near-death and battered cars, were lucky, because other travelers were killed or injured or lost their vehicles in a huge pileup on I-70 that I had just missed. Indeed, as I had been fishtailing at that exit, rescue vehicles were screaming (but creeping) past me in the other lane toward that accident. In the hotel lobby, I gave Noah's chocolates to crying kids in summer clothes (?!) who were going to have to sleep on a cot somewhere (I did not, however, offer them my hotel room; so much for altruism) and climbed exhausted into bed about 8 p.m. Day 2: Topeka to Albert Lea At 4 a.m. Sunday, I arose from a nervous sleep and headed out in the frigid dark, hoping to get to Minnesota in time for at least some of my 11 a.m.-8 p.m. work shift at the Star Tribune. The snow and sleet had stopped and the freeway was open again. Roads were covered with a thick, bumpy snowpack, but plows and salters were out. Home free, I thought, popping in a Christmas music CD and driving very carefully. Four hours later, I wasn't even near Des Moines. Traffic was inching along, and occasionally some vehicle shooting past me at a bold 40 miles per hour would go spinning off the often black-iced freeway into the ditch. But hey, I was being careful and making progress. Maybe I could get back in time to work a night shift?? Then it got REALLY bad. North of Des Moines, it wasn't snowing. But up ahead, there appeared to be a big cloud over the road. What the heck was that, if it wasn't snowing? It was whiteout. Northwest winds had begun screeching across the countryside, carrying ground snow in such as way that you could not see ANYTHING. Traffic came to a complete halt. I sat there on the freeway, able to make out flashing hazard lights in the ditches on both sides of the freeway and all over the freeway, too: a pileup. Two pileups! Three! Behind me, cars slowed, their drivers blind, and nearly slammed into me, sometimes skidding off into the ditches to avoid the cars in front of them. I'm gonna die, I thought. Again. We sat there the longest time. A few people got out of their cars, and rescue vehicles, creeping along, finally arrived. A cop directed us through and around the accidents. But you still couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of your car. So I pulled over on the shoulder and sat there, putting the blanket over my shoulders. To my right, barely visible through the whiteout, was a field in which a herd of strange-looking cows were huddled. After a few minutes of studying them, I realized they weren't cows -- they were elk. Reindeer! Any other day, this would have been a charming discovery, but at this moment, it just added to the feeling of otherworldliness. Still, I wasn't as panicky as I had been in Kansas, because the snow wasn't covering the car, just blowing past it. And it was snow, not ice. But whiteout made is impossible to drive. After about a half hour, a semi with its hazard lights on, moving very slowly, went by on my left with two cars behind it, carefully spaced, with their hazard lights on too. The little caravan slowed, and I realized it was waiting for me to join it. I pulled out behind it, putting my hazards on. Slowly, slowly, we crept along, picking up a few more drivers here and there. That semi led us through the whiteout, going slowly enough that it had time to stop when it came up on accidents (there were many), then leading us past them. To my amazement, cars would occasionally sail past us in the left lane, apparently driving blind, and in almost every case we later came upon them in the ditch. Here's the worst part. Both in Kansas and Iowa, I saw cars in the ditch with people stranded, but I did not stop to check on them or offer them a ride. I simply couldn't figure out how to stop without creating more havoc. I felt like I was abandoning those people whose scared faces stared out of their car windows, and I was. I should have stopped -- but I didn't, because I was so scared. (Yikes, what would I do had it been wartime? It's made for some pondering.) The Iowa whiteout eased from time to time, but our semi-led convoy pretty much stuck together. In southern Minnesota, the whiteout went total, and we crept like inchworms up the Albert Lea exit. That Albert Lea sign looked like heaven to me, I tell ya. I got the last hotel room in Albert Lea, too. Everyone after me had to stay in the National Guard Armory. Given that that last hotel room was foul with smoke residue, I wish I had, too. I did go down and talk to people (again, we all were hell-bent to share our freeway horror stories) and hear impromptu Christmas music played by stranded musicians. (Meanwhile, back at the Strib, the noble Kathleen Clonts was called in to cover my shift. Bless her very much! I will work for her this Friday.) Day 3: Home at last! On Monday, Christmas Eve morning, I got up early. The sun was out and the sky was clear. I drove the final leg to Minneapolis with no problem, though everywhere along the freeway were abandoned, tipped, crumpled vehicles from accidents the night before (at least one of which was fatal, I learned later). I don't think I'll ever again drive cross-country when the forecast contains any sleet or snow. It turned out I had passed right through the middle of two unforecast blizzards. Those two days were full of mortality moments, those times when you realize that the border between life and death isn't all that secure. As a result, Christmas seemed especially sweet this year. My dented car seems a small price to pay for getting home unhurt. Frankly, I feel lucky to have lived to tell of this; it was that bad. I, and others, owe a lot to that calm, careful semi driver, whoever he was. Other than the dent in my car, there's only one physical sign of the ordeal: my very sore hands. They're achy and weak because I was gripping the car wheel for so long over those two harrowing days. I didn't even realize I was doing it till I got home.