Adventures in Icy weather

So tomorrow evening and into Tuesday morning, there is a Winter Storm expected. Already an alert has been posted. According to a news report I read on Yahoo! news, sleet,freezing rain, and ice are expected with this storm.

This means that I better make sure I'm stocked up tomorrow and get what I need to get done then. If there's ice expected, there is no way I'm setting foot outside my apartment.

Thanks to living in Oklahoma for about 2 years, I've had my share of experiences with ice (and wintry weather in general) and none were very pleasant.

One experience was ironically on the first day of Spring last year. My mom and I were driving back to Oklahoma from New Mexico. Technically we were somewhere between Texas and New Mexico and not yet in Oklahoma when we ran into ice but still. I was driving and lost control of the car on a patch of black ice. We spun out but thankfully neither the car nor my mom and I were hurt. The car hit a snow drift on the side of the road.It was open field and there were no other cars to be seen anywhere.

The other experience happened during January 2009 when I was in Oklahoma at OSU (I might have mentioned it before). It starting sleeting one day and the roads and sidewalks got really icy. I had a class that afternoon and of course, the campus wasn't closed yet but my professor hadn't canceled either, which meant I had to brave the slippery sidewalks to get to class. That was experience. I lived only 2 blocks away from the campus which on a normal day would've taken me about 10 minutes to walk to class. I don't know how long it took me to walk that day. I know I left with plenty of time though but it still felt like forever. I tried to be extremely careful walking because I didn't want to fall. I managed to walk about a block sticking close to the buildings the entire time. Then I got to a crossing and there was nothing to hold on to. I struggled to cross because it was just too slick. I nearly fell twice just trying to cross. I even considered going back and not going to class but I didn't want to have the absence on my record if I could avoid it. I finally managed to get to class safely and without falling but it wasn't fun. To top it off when we were nearly finished with our class, the announcement came that they were closing the campus. Well, my professor had no choice but to let us leave since she had to get back to Tulsa anyway. So I had to make my way back on the icy sidewalks to my apartment. I finally made it back. But after that I told myself I would never go out when it was icy again if I absolutely did not need to. On a more positive note, at least I didn't have to go in to work that evening (I wasn't going to anyway, I would have called in. I didn't want to be driving on those icy roads). My boss had called and told me not to come in due to the bad weather.

So yeah. I've just made the decision to not go outside or anywhere when the roads and sidewalks are icy. It's not worth risking my safety.