110 Flying High With Dan and Lou

The stress of raising a family, both its joys and heartaches soon turns into, “I can’t believe it happened so fast, and where did they go?” Unless of course the experience wasn’t what you hoped it would be and then it’s, “Whew am I glad its over.” With Sandy and I it was a grand experience and one that we enjoyed, maybe not handled well enough to do over again, but at least well enough to visit the kids far to often, at least from their perspective.

This meant visiting them for whatever excuse seemed reasonable and a birthday of course was a valid enough reason. Our son Bobby’s birthday fell wouldn’t you know it, on February 28 every year. It would have been better if it would have occurred at least occasionally in May or June as the weather was so much better for traveling that time of year.

This particular year we left to visit him in the middle of a big snow storm and even as we turned onto the highway from our house the little red ‘77 Civic couldn’t make the corner it was so slippery and we slid up, on, and over the divider in the middle of the road. Not a good omen for what was ahead.

After picking up our friends Dan and Lou Johnson we headed off into the snowstorm. Getting to the ferry for the trip to the main land was not a problem but it was snowing most of the way to Walla Walla where our kids were attending College.

Dan did not seem too worried until we had climbed up the west side of Snoqualmie Pass and were flying along on the hard packed snow after the summit. It was soon after this that I noticed that he had slowly moved his hands up until they were both white from grabbing the back of my seat and his face had the determined look of survival. Trying to assure Dan that by driving fast made it easier to stay on the snow packed road only seemed to increase his terror. What added more to the drama and Dan’s panic were the forty cars that we flew by in the ditch. Some were still spinning their wheels trying to get back on the road and one car had slid onto the guardrail and was waiting for a tow truck to lift it off. In the meantime Lou had dosed off into a sound sleep while waiting for our arrival in Walla Walla.

Just for the record, we had a lovely time visiting our children, at least from my perspective and I’m happy to say that our trip home turned out well with no accident or problems of any kind, but I will never know if that was because of, or in spite of Dan’s terror. The bible does say that, “the prayers of a righteous man availed much,” and I’m not going to comment on how righteous Dan may or may not be but I’m sure Dan was praying most of the way. I think we all were.