Driveway Drivel

Driving V.E.R.Y. cautiously to the barn last night (and equally slowly home) should have been a big hint.

Slip sliding out to the van this morning should have clued me in even more.

The fact that the traction control kicked in as soon as I put the van in reverse should have decided it.

But I wasn't about to let something as simple as ice keep me home today. I had an appointment to make, a fridge that was emptying out, and thanks to a week's worth of tax time book keeping/number entering/receipt sorting/all that good stuff (Yes dear, I'm still working on those books. I just took a fifteen minute break from typing on one computer to type on the other. I'll be back to the books as soon as I finish this blog post.) a steadily increasing case of cabin fever. No way was I staying home for anything short of a dead vehicle or a sick kid.

And to be perfectly honest, the ice was mostly on our driveway and the dirt roads. Once you are on the highway, it's smooth sailing...er driving...

So I braved the ice rink that leads from the road to my house and off I went.

And off I went indeed. Or nearly so.

Backing out of my parking spot involved me putting the van into reverse and sliding it backwards about 10 feet. Traction control promptly decided to control traction and my van moved in the proper direction after that. Except when the traction control decided to turn traitor.

See Traction Control and I have a love/hate relationship. 90% of the time, it's great. That's when it's OFF. The other 10% of the time, when I actually do need it? Not so much. It likes to think my wheels should go straight instead of turn even though there's a corner right in front of me. Or that the ditch is so much more inviting than the road. Or my wheels are spinning too fast so let's slow them down and make Jill stop right in the middle of that piddly little snow drift that doesn't even come to the bumper but is covering a 2 inch thick layer of ice so once she's stopped she can't go anywhere and it'll take her and her husband a good half hour to get the van unstuck. Yeah, Traction Control and I are frenemies.

So I should have KNOWN to turn off the darn thing before I left. But I didn't.

And here's where I'll admit that my annually expanding experience with vehicles, icy surfaces, and snowbanks came in very handy. Despite how the previous paragraphs sound, I did NOT go in the ditch. I made it to town and back without incident.  I will say having the van do a 90 degree power slide around the corner of the driveway unintentionally (impressive when you consider I was doing about 5mph at the time) was a  teensy bit thrilling but I don't care to repeat the experience. I think it's just tempting fate (and those ditches!) to try it purposefully.

And the next time I leave, I'm turning off Traction Control before I leave my parking spot. I have this nasty suspicion that computer program/gadget doodad was only playing Cat/Mouse with me today. Next time I may not be so lucky...