Throwback Thursday: The stupidest thing I've ever done.

Today is exactly two years since I did the stupidest thing I've ever done. What is that you ask? Oh, you know, just driving back from Indy in horrific conditions after driving down to Indy during a snow emergency in -22 degree F weather with steady winds of 20+ miles per hour the previous day.

It was an adventure all right.

I only did it because I needed to drop my brother off at the airport so he could fly back to Colorado to start his graduate school semester. Most of the flights were canceled, but his evening flight on Frontier did end up leaving. I guess Frontier-people are used to dealing with the wild and the accompanying wild conditions.

Nearly all of Indiana was in a full snow emergency, so, legally, we weren't supposed to be on the roads the day we drove down. What would normally have been a 2.5 to 3 hour drive turned into more than 5 hours of driving. It was a good thing we had all day to get him to the airport. The crazy thing was that first day when it was illegal to drive was actually the better driving day, -22 degrees F temp and 20+mph wind and all. The extreme cold and steady wind actually kept the ice solid and almost sticky. Consequently, although we couldn't really go any faster than 25-30mph, we didn't slip much at all on the solid ice. Semi-trucks had trouble that day because of the wind, but the wind was manageable in a car.

We spent the night with my sister in Indy so we could drive up the next day. Some counties were still in the full state of emergency, but many had lowered the status so it was discouraged, but legal to drive. My other sister had come with me from Fort Wayne to drop my brother off and got a few pictures, so you can see below what it looked like around Indy. It was at least that bad or worse for 90% of the drive home.

I-465 around Indy on Jan. 7, 2014

It was a bit warmer that day (-10 or so degrees F), less windy, and more people were out. This made it so much worse on the way back. The ice was able to melt a little making it very slick, and the increased traffic made it much more stressful. A bit north of our stop for lunch in Gas City, I actually started slowly spinning out and drifting left across the highway on an especially slick section of ice, but I was able to save it with a series of corrective steering. Nobody was immediately around us, but I'm sure the cars behind us that could see it happen weren't encouraged.

A little while after almost sliding off the road or spinning out, I also had to make the scary decision to pass a long stretch of very slow moving cars in the right lane. I originally was trying to stay in the line going slowly (about 10-15mph), but it was so slick that the slow speed allowed the bank of the highway around a curve to the right to cause my car to start sliding off the highway to the right, even against the turn. Speeding up to pass people was a risk, but it proved to be the right risk because I was able to maintain the sweet-spot speed that gave me the most stability. Too slow and too fast were both bad, but keeping it at about 25mph allowed me use inertia to my advantage in keeping some semblance of control to make it back.

Driving to Indy on the Monday and driving back on the Tuesday was around 10 hours of driving, and I was exhausted for the entire week after that. I did get a bit of a break though, because everything all week I would have had to play for was canceled because of the snow.

Now you know the story of the stupidest thing I've ever done.

Never again.

Never.

Again.

Me while driving home from Indy on January 7, 2014