Adventures with Ice and a Ditch

• DESCRIPTION: It was winter. I was driving to school to go to a basketball game. I was on Maple street, a divided highway connecting Elkhorn (where I lived) to Omaha (where school lived). The stretch in between is pretty uninhabited, or was at the time. It had recently snowed, so there was snow and slush on the ground, and it was snowing again. It was a cold snow. I was driving the speed limit on a road which I did not consider dangerous. Occasionally the car felt loose and I would notice the speedo make a sudden leap, so I would let off the gas and all would be fine again. Then I hit a patch of thick icy slush. The car began to turn to the left. I turned the right way, but I overcompensated. The car spun the other way, and faster. This time my rapid overcorrection was futile. The car slid out of control and I did nothing to regain it, as it was beyond hope. At one point I was going at least 45 mph while perfectly sideways. The car ended up facing almost backwards in the ditch to the side of the road. How it stopped so gently, I don't know. I didn't feel any hard jostling. Then my problem became getting out of the ditch. I eventually discovered I could "rock" the car by shifting into drive, driving forward, then shifting into reverse, and driving up the back side of the ditch, then back into drive. Eventually, after a considerable amount of wheel-spinning and flying turf, I was back on the road. I drove ten miles under the speed limit, like everyone else had been doing. Later my parents were driving somewhere and they came upon my big messy tracks and pointed them out to themselves, having no idea it was their son whose car made them.

• DAMAGE TO DITCH: Lots of damaged turf. Serious tire track action.

• DAMAGE TO CROWN VIC: There was a lot of grass on it. I washed it.