Cola Rum

I was an escort driver for two years, delivering brand new vehicles all around the country.

Being a Floridian, I was initially enthused with the prospect of seeing a real winter.

In a month's time, I went through so many life-threatening situations involving snow that I had begun to perceive that cold, white, icy stuff collectively as one large anthrax smoothie.

From behind the wheel, I watched 35 vehicles crash all around me outside of Dallas when I-20 froze over.

It taught me how to cruise my vehicle without smashing on the brakes or make rash movements with the steering wheel.

I flipped my vehicle over in the snow in the countryside of Wisconsin at 2 in the morning when I pulled over to check my map.

It taught me the importance of knowing where to park during a snowfall.

I learned the value of calling ahead to truck stops to make sure that they were still in service when I pulled into this truck stop in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at one in the morning during a snowstorm to find out that it had been abandoned.

In a month's time, through trial, error, and a heavy dose of elbow grease, I had become an expert driver in the snow.

But even when you learn how to dot your I's and cross your T's, you can still forget the curve that J.

Jay as in continually checking the weather station for broad weather changes.

A valuable lesson taught to me by a sudden whiteout.

I had left Buffalo one morning on I-90 to deliver this brand new Prius in Chicago.

Now the weatherman had said that there would be light snow in Indiana in the evening.

So I had planned to drive through as much as Indiana as I could before the first sign of snow.

That's what I planned.

But I learned plans tend to alter themselves when human nature and mother nature has to occupy the same space.

That light snow in the evening in Indiana came four hours early in Ohio.

Now, common sense dictated that I should have turned to the weather station to check the weather.

But I was listening to the jazz of great Miles Davis on the Sound System and talking to a lovely woman on the phone.