Cottongim Christmas ... Part 1

Peter the Road Warrior
Oliver - his pissed off look ("Why am I in a car for 24 hours again?")

I will slowly chronicle the adventures, mishaps and fun of the Holidays. As usual, I am so filled with excitement and anticipation to see my family that I hardly sleep, I fidget, I forget to put on shoes, pack major items, and generally "buzz" around work and my house in the hours leading up to our departure.
Low and behold Peter and I leave at 6am on Friday morning the 21st. From the second we left Livingston, to the second we arrive in Denver at our half way stop, the roads look like this:It was literally a sheet of ice from Livingston to Denver. Peter is an AMAZING driver. He stays calm, cool, collected, and always aware of what is going on. Besides that, he actually has road warrior skills. He spent one of his lives driving truck and it has paid of. That reminds me - I need to do a whole blog on Peter's jobs... quite interesting all the places he has been and the things he has done!
Anyways - just south of Douglas, Wyoming we had a VERY serious and VERY scary close call. Our guardian angels were working overtime on this one. The roads- remember still a sheet of ice - turned into a white out. 60 mph heading down the interstate, any sudden movements, breaking, stopping and you are GUARANTEED to be in the ditch. We knew there were multiple cars in front of us b/c we had been traveling safely along with them for the what "feels -to-be the endless expanse of nothingness that Wyoming is." We see a dark car stalled / stopped ahead and in the right hand lane and we see a Durango spinning and "pin balling" across the highway next to it and in front of us. Brooke is somehow NOT screaming and grabbing Peter's arm (which is rare... yes, I know grabbing the driver's arm is a bad idea, but I can't help it- it's instinct). As we are driving into "whiteness" and know that there is spinning car and a stalled car within 25 yards of us we are thinking: 1) can't brake or we too will be a pin ball and hit something or roll 2) what the hell is in front of these cars 3) we know there is semi truck behind us not too far and they will NOT be stopping 4) oh my goodness!

Well, it all seems like a dream now, but just like the Days of Thunder Movie when Cole Trickle (aka Mr. Katie Holmes) is driving through the smoke of the crashed cars on the track and he picks his line and just goes for it, coming out clean on the other side... Peter picked a line on the far left side of that road and we narrowly drive past an out of control, spinning car that was inches from ours and come out clean on the other side....

We breath, look back and Peter hears a crunching noise. The crunch came from tha jackkniving semi truck coming sideways through the mess we just drove out of. The large truck took out the spinning pinball car and the car stalled out on the side of the road. Behind the semi truck, we have no idea what was coming after....

We called 911 immediately and then sat in silence for a while, with a dose of trembling. Even the dogs were stunned and knew something was not quite right.

We felt guilty for days - wondering if everyone was ok, if there would have been anything we could have done... But we know that stopping (if we could have) would have been a guaranteed loss of life and the highway reports never reported a fatality on that stretch for that day... Thank goodness.

So, we get to Denver to Peter's college friends house Julie and Matt Bailey (above). They had margaritas and gin and tonics ready for us when we arrived. It was nice to get out of the "box of death" for an evening and prepare for our second leg of the "road trip from down under" (and I don't mean Australia).

The next morning, we were back in the truckster and loaded for bear. We had a few hours of clean roads in Colorado and then we hit the storm that was working it's way across Kansas and New Mexico! We were stuck in Wichita for about 2 hours going about 10 mph. They had shut I35 down for a while and we didn't think we would even make it in that night. BUT, again, Peter is amazing, fearless, and can drive through anything somehow. The dogs were stir crazy by the time we hit the Oklahoma border. Oliver slept with his head in the food basket the whole way down and breaking that up with "talking" and whimpering at us like he was totally bored. Gaucho as usual stared thoughtfully out the window, noticing every single cow, car, bird, or piece of trash on the roadside.

We arrive Saturday night in Tulsa! No worse for the wear and exhausted... Ready to begin the multiple family gatherings and Holiday festivities. More to come in Cottongim Christmas ... Part Deux (that's 2 in french).