"The Ditch"

Since we've moved out to the country, I keep hearing all these stories about people driving their cars into ditches. The way I understand it, it happens constantly. Especially in Winter, for obvious reasons.

When you live in the big city, there are a lot of driving hazards - and that's why car insurance is so darn expensive - but one thing you never have to worry about is... "The Ditch". There are cyclists right, left and center, wanton pedestrians darting from between parked cars, escaped dogs running wild, a myriad of confusing and often conflicting traffic signs, enraged drivers and countless other distractions.

By comparison, country roads offer only two dangers: ditches and animals (even domestic ones - cows, goats and chickens often do escape).  When you drive on a country road, you're mostly in a very calm state of mind, especially when driving at night in a snow storm, when snow flakes shining in your headlights transport you into an hypnotic voyage of intergalactic dreamy relaxation. And even more especially when you're driving The Spaceship, which is what we nicknamed our comfortable silver minivan. I can see how easily you could lose sight of the road edges during this kind of absent-minded traveling or even have to suddenly react to a night prowler running across the road and end up sliding into the ditch.

Last night, I was invited to a Tarot card reading with the gals and was asked to be the driver. On the way there, when I was cautioned to slow down on a sharp curve, I proudly expressed my confidence in The Spaceship and our expensive snow tires. Once inside and sitting around the table eating munchies, someone mentioned "The Ditch" and I innocently asked if everyone ends up in it at some point or other. Wylene laughed when she said "Well at least once, my Dear!". I suddenly felt a strange feeling of false confidence that I would never be one of them. You can guess what happened next.

The end of the night brought with it one of my country "christenings". As we were pulling out of Jenny's driveway, Terri yelled out "Watch out! You're gonna end up in the culvert!!!" I,  so innocently again, asked "What's a culvert?" when the right front end of the car dropped two feet down with a big clunk. I spun my tires and muddy water flew up into the air and Terri yelled "Don't spin your tires, we're gonna get stuck! You've got to rock the car back and forth!" So I did, or at least tried to. All that did was send more mud flying twenty feet up in the air. We were stuck.

Fortunately, I was amongst some very strong and independent women who knew all about ditches. It took half an hour, but resourceful Jenny got some cables from the house and succeeded in pulling The Spaceship out of the culvert with her truck. If I had been alone on a dark country road, I would have had to walk all the way home and possibly get eaten by one of our neighborhood bears. Thank you, Ladies! (Oh and I'm terribly sorry for ruining your beautifully white, postcard landscape just before Christmas time)

Now I know what a culvert is. The only problem is that I think it might be slightly different than a ditch, which means ... this story is to be continued.