23 degrees + rain = ICE

Have you ever been ice skating on a road? Today our car went ice skating, with us in it. In order to attend all of our pre-church meetings, Richard an I typically leave about three hours before Church begins. But today Richard's first meeting was moved a half hour so we didn't leave the house until 8:30. As we began driving to church Richard commented, "It's 23 degrees and raining." Well, with that comment we should have clued in, turned around and headed for home, but instead we got on the freeway. As you may know, central Pennsylvania consists of rolling hills and finding a flat straight road is near impossible. If you're not going down a hill you're going up one. So we made it to our second big hill when a truck in front of us began swerving all over the road. The road was turning into a sheet of ice and the woman driving the truck was over correcting and really out of control. Eventually she hit the guardrail, which stopped her. At this time we pulled over to ensure she was okay. From there she followed us to the exit, which wasn't too far away, and got off the road. Instead of getting off this exit, we kept making our way to church. At this time I began expressing my concern about driving over long bridge, which goes over a very deep canyon. The canyon scares me a bit, so I am always extra cautious when driving over it, particulalry in bad weather. As we began our decent down to the bridge we noticed a number of cars that slid off the side of the road. As we began our decent our real concern became avoiding the other cars. We were obviously going VERY slow, but at this point the entire road was a THICK sheet of ice and we were at its mercy. Eventually the ice took us over to a the side of the road where the snow stopped us and we hung out for two and half hours unable to drive forward or backward very far. We kept the car on, just on case someone came cruising by and we needed to somehow get our car out of the way. Once on the side of the road we called our branch president who decided to cancel church. Here are some pictures of what things looked like while we waited on the side of the road...

After two and a half hours the snowplow came through and dropped a little bit of salt on the road. A train of cars then followed the plow, which also helped break up the ice. By this time the temperature began increasing and by the time we drove into State College and back home (with a little detour in the middle that required us to go back to the freeway and avoid an accident on a back road) the temperature was up to 32. We spent the rest of the day at home.

From this experience we learned an invaluable lesson, "Don't drive in the rain when it's 23 degrees."

Also, I am grateful for being taught the following:
#1: Keep a car kit with you at all times. You never know when you will need it. Always make sure you have water and other necessities with you.
#2: Make sure you have atleast a 1/2 tank of gas in your car at all times (we could have been stranded all day and needed more gas to stay warm)
#3: Filling up your gas tank Saturday evening is the only way to go