Carmageddon (longest post on the planet)

The title I stole from some guy on the radio. It refers to the outrageous number of cars left abandoned at the side (and sometimes in the middle) of the road on Christmas Eve night near Oklahoma city. My count of slide-offs was up to 43 before I quit counting and that didn't include the 100 or so more we saw that had been purposely pulled to the side of the road and left. Read on for the whole story.

We left around 10:30 in the morning on Christmas Eve because we needed to arrive by 4 for a family party at Rob's parents house. The drive (Plano, TX to Harrah, OK) is typically 3 1/2 hours so we figured that gave us plenty of time. We'd looked up the weather the previous night and what we could find said there would be a storm with some rain and snow. All was going well despite some rain coming down. We stopped for lunch around 11:30 though Ava insisted she was not hungry (when is this kid ever not hungry?) and wouldn't eat anything. At around 2 we hit a little traffic but not too bad until 2:30 when we were at an absolute stand still on the freeway. At this point we had been driving through snow fall for a little while. We waited patiently and called the in-laws to tell them we would probably be a little later than planned. After we had been sitting there an hour or so we were starting to get annoyed because we had the radio on and nobody was telling us anything. Our side of the freeway was literally a parking lot and yet we couldn't find one piece of information on it on the internet (thank you iPhone) or the radio. Finally we heard that all the interstates had been closed. We waited to be directed off some exit where the freeway had been closed............10 1/2 hours later. No that's not a typo. We really did sit there in the same spot for 10 1/2 hours.

Let me answer the questions that are coming to your mind at this point: 1) no we did not have any food, unless you count half a bag of bugles as food which I guess is better than nothing 2) Ava did great and she only spent about 2 of those hours watching Dora 3) No we didn't have a full tank of gas and could not keep the car running. We had about 1/4 of a tank so after Rob set up a bed in the back for Ava and I, he slept freezing in the front seat so he could let the car run for 10 minutes every hour or so 4) yes we told Ava we were camping and let her open all the Christmas presents we had in the car for her 5) yes I am 8 months pregnant and typically have to use the facilities numerous times in 10 1/2 hours...........Ava is at the end of potty training right now, there may or may not have been a frog potty in the car that I may or may not have had to resort to using during which time Ava may or may not have encouraged me by saying things like "good job mommy, you're peeing on the potty. you're a big girl huh mommy cuz you keep your panties dry." (Come on people, it was either that or stick my pregnant butt out the window in 10 degree weather. Not gonna happen. In my defense, I only used it twice....I mean I may or may not have only used it twice.) 6) Rob used the much less humiliating method of peeing in a coke bottle and pouring it out the window........seriously. 7) Yes I laughed out loud at 1 a.m. when a policeman pounded on the car window to wake us up and shouted "Come on, let's get moving" as if he was in a hurry or something!

A couple of cool things happened while we were sitting there. We saw a guy whose car had slid off the road going the other direction. I was watching him try to get it out of the snow bank and I said out loud "If someone would just get out and push him, he could probably get unstuck. Ah, somebody go help him." I actually wasn't trying to send a message to Rob as he wasn't even wearing a coat and it was freezing outside. But he jumped out of the car and trudged through the snow and started to help push the guy out. After about the second push, about 4 other men jumped out of their vehicles and came to help. They were all decked out in hats and gloves and big coats and boots. Rob and I talked about how most people are willing to help in a situation like that but it often takes just one person to get the ball rolling. The guy was extremely grateful when they got him unstuck and it only took Rob about 20 minutes to get some feeling back in his fingers!!! The other cool thing we saw was after we'd been there about 7 hours. We see some guy walking down the middle of the two lanes with a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper knocking on windows to see if people have something to drink and if not tossing them a can or two until he ran out.

Living in such an age of technology and information, the most frustrating things was not knowing what was going on, having zero info about why were were sitting there, how long it would be, etc. There was one of those roadside electronic signs about 4 or 5 cars up from us on the other side of the road. It was flashing a couple of things and the only part we could see was "Prepare to stop" and then it would flash a number and minutes and we couldn't see what was underneath that. The number went up and down the whole time we were sitting there 74 minutes, 63, 58, 41, 84, 32, 51. I told Rob I was going to get out and go see what the sign said because it was driving me crazy and maybe it was telling us how long we had to sit there. Rob wouldn't let me get out and told me it didn't matter anyway but after some time Rob says to me "now that sign is driving me crazy. I wanna know what it says." At one point we even played a game to see who could guess the right number that the minutes were going to change to next. In the end when we drove by it, the sign said "Prepare to stop __ minutes to the end of construction zone." Yep, it had nothing to do with why we were sitting there but in our yearning for any kind of information, it kept us entertained for quite some time.

When we finally got off the freeway, the streets in the city were such a mess it was like off-roading to get through them. Rob did awesome and we found a gas station that actually had gas on only our second try. We pulled in to the in-laws driveway at around 3;30 am. Rob pointed out that having been in the car for 17 1/2 hours we could have made the drive to see my family in Utah. Maybe next time. It did turn out to be the worst snowstorm in the history of Oklahoma City and we stayed cooped up in the house for 2 days before heading back. I know that most people's Christmas posts probably include things like gifts they got or what their kid thought of the big day etc. but all that seems pretty anticlimactic compared to what it took just to get to that point! For all of you who worried and prayed for us, thank you thank you. It could have been much worse and to be honest, we're already laughing about it now. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!