A day trip to San Diego

No, it was not a fun trip. We had some jobs to be done, and we decided to drive all the way to San Diego. It was more than 8 hours drive, still we decided to do that. 

It was a weekend. Our plan to go Saturday morning, and come back  Sunday night. It seemed very uneventful long journey.However, it turned out  exactly opposite. Still it gives me chill on my spine when I recall the journey. We departed home Saturday morning . It was a beautiful shadowy day. Soon we left behind the neighborhood, and started on freeway with rolling verdant green hills on the both sides.

We reached San Diego late evening. Sunday we had meetings. We started back from there around three in the afternoon, and we thought we would reach in the middle of the night. To  avoid the Los Angeles traffic we took 210  instead of i5N from there. We were talking about our meeting, and our long uneventful journey ahead. When we were about to merge with i5 N, one news came in the GPS of phone. It was told that there was a delay of half an hour due to one crash on i5 N. We were still driving on normal pace.

We drove smoothly on freeway 210 before merging with i5. Then slowly we caught in the traffic snarl. Gradually the car became standstill. We could still see the afterglow of sunset. The bight golden rays enveloped the entire sky. That was spectacular. We had been enjoying that without knowing that what was waiting for us in next few hours. Slowly the sky became dark. As it was highway , there was no street lights. We were far from any locality, only we were among a bunch of cars and trucks who were equally anxious like us. 

As the sky grew darker, temperature started falling down. When we were on top of the mountain it started snowing heavily. We couldn’t see any sign of clearing traffic. We had no idea what was going on in the front. Only we could see from the map that it would take few hours to reach Lebec  when it was just few miles away. 

Police diverted the traffic from the freeway. We took the exit and came to an area where we filled the gas tank and relieved ourselves. We thought we are now out of the mess, and could drive safely home. However, our bucket was yet to be filled. The road we were diverted was a mountain road covered with ice, and pitch dark. We started slowing driving up the mountain. Soon we realized that our car had been skidding. Mr. Man tried to turn around, which made situation worse. The car started sliding back towards the cliff. I frantically asked him to stop the car. One tow-truck guy told us to move the car to avoid getting stuck in the ice. 

In that desperate situation I called for road side assistance. To our dismay we were told to wait for three hours. Another tow-truck guy was coming from the other side. He suggested  us to drive on the rough snow on the road side instead of driving on the black ice. That was good suggestion. We crawled down from the mountain, and reached at a four way stop. That area was covered with dense snow, and it was still snowing. We desperately wanted to go home. 

We experienced the beautiful afterglow of sunset before the nightmare began.

Kiddo wanted to stay in the hotel across the street. He was extremely tired. First I also thought same, but one concern came in my mind. The weather could get worse next morning, then we would be stuck there. Mr. Man wanted to take a chance to get in i5 N again. He successfully got on  i5 N. Traffic was much better, and we could slowing cross the mountain, and came down on the plain land. After that drive was easy, but tedious. At last we reached home in the wee hours of morning.