Monday afternoon I picked up a tunnel freezer (whatever the hell that is) in Jacksonville, FL heading to the Sara Lee plant in Downer's Grove, IL.

The trip was pretty typical until I hit Indianapolis this morning. Snowstorm. Major snowstorm. The roads were a complete disaster. It normally takes me on average about 30 minutes to get through Indy. Today it took better than 3 hours.

Once I got clear of Indy things got progressively worse with each passing mile. There were car, SUV, and big rig wrecks littering the sides of the highway all the way up. Many of the wrecks were multiple vehicle wrecks and there were a good many overturned vehicles, including more than a few rigs.

The piece I was hauling only weighed about 3,000 lbs so I may as well have been running empty. Not a good thing when the road is a solid sheet of very slippery ice. I crawled along at an average of 25 mph, hanging well back from any other vehicles, and just trying to get where I was going as best I could without changing the shape of my vehicle or that of any other vehicle.

At one point I decided to get off the road for a few minutes and refill my coffee cup. I let off the accelerator and gently nudged the brakes so as to gradually slow down for the exit ramp. As soon as I nudged the brakes my rig broke traction and tried to go into a jack-knife on me.

Reflexively I executed a correction maneuver that involves hitting the gas and applying the trailer brakes at the same time, while steering for correction. This effectively lunges the tractor forward while jerking the trailer back which straightens the rig. The trick is to do it fast enough and only long enough to correct the jack-knife.

Wait too long and it only creates a spinning jack-knife, which is almost always fatal. Hold it for too long and it just sends the whole rig into a spin off into the woods somewhere. It's not something an inexperienced driver can pull off without a major wreck and so they don't teach it in truck driving schools.

By the time I had the problem corrected I was already past the exit so I just eased onto the shoulder where there was plenty of snow and regained my traction to keep moving. I exited later at a ramp I knew had a much straighter angle and wouldn't require braking before hand.

Once I had my coffee and had regained enough insanity to get back onto the skating rink I pulled out and continued on. If I'd had any sense I would have just stayed there, nice and warm and safe. But then I never claimed to have any sense.

I passed a good many more wrecks on my way to Chicagoland. I had one more close call when an SUV came flying past me going way too fast for conditions. As soon as he went by I let off the gas thinking "This idiot is about to crash". I no sooner formed the thought than he spun out in front of me.

Luckily I steered the right way (stopping wasn't an option), guessing at which way he might spin off. He spun off to the right and I had steered to the left to avoid him. Last I saw his SUV was parked down in the ditch. As he hadn't rolled over or slammed into anything that may have caused serious injury I figured he was right where he belonged and kept plodding along at the break-neck speed of 25 mph.

I think the one wreck that bothered me the most was up on I-88 near my delivery point. A school bus had gone off the highway and crashed head first into a power pole. The power lines were laying across the hood of the bus. I really hope no kids got hurt in that one. When the road conditions are that dangerous the buses shouldn't be running.

I finally made it to my delivery point, several hours later than planned. But I made it. The guy told me that the other truck he was expecting from the same factory had called to say he had called it quits just North of Indy and he was surprised that I had made it there in one piece.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised too. But I'm not much for giving up too easily.

Once they offloaded the machine I headed about 20 miles away and picked up two huge steel gears that I'll deliver not far from here in the morning. It is brutally cold here and expected to get much colder over night. The forecast I heard earlier is calling for sub-zero highs for tomorrow. Damn. It's right around 1 degree here at the moment and by morning that's going to sound warm as the temp will be in the neighborhood of -14.

And people wonder why I live in Florida.