On our way to Gore yesterday for an afternoon of skiing, Nat and I were cruising along the Northway in his WRX. We were cruising in the middle of three lanes no faster than the flow of traffic at about 80 or 85 miles per hour, when suddenly, a blue minivan we had passed earlier comes barreling down the slow lane out of nowhere. Not far ahead of us in the slow lane was a little Honda. Quickly gaining on the Honda, the minivan had plenty of room to cut over to the middle lane in front of us. Faster. Faster.
I braced myself for the impact. Nat slowed down, ready to react to the impending collision.
Wherever the lady driving the minivan had been — lost in her own thoughts, dozing off, reading — she suddenly snapped out of it just inches before the high-speed impact and slammed on the brakes — really, really hard. The minivan lunged forward and began to violently jerk from side to side, all just inches from the Honda’s rear bumper. I was envisioning an impact or the minivan rolling off the side of the Northway. By some miracle, the minivan recovered and incident was avoided. It was way too close for comfort. There’s no telling what kind of impact a crash or rollover would have had on us.
We made it to the mountain alive and clocked in a solid couple hours of afternoon skiing. Despite the warmest winter ever that we’ve been having this year, the snow wasn’t bad at all. The bottom of the mountain was slushy and skied out, but we avoided that, focusing most of our efforts on Straightbrook Quad at the top of the mountain. We hit Chatiemac a number of times and Hawkeye here and there. Though super moguly and mostly crunchy, we also hit the double diamond run The Rumor, which I first discovered nearly a year ago and enjoy a lot more when it’s covered in powder instead of crunch. But despite the conditions, it was still a great run and a super fun day.
