This Side Up

May the wind be at your back

By JOHN HOWELL
Posted 12/26/19

Remember that first time you lost control of a car on an icy road? It's surreal. You turn the wheel and what you're used to happening doesn't happen. The car doesn't turn. Now what? It doesn't seem to matter where you turn, the car is going to do its

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This Side Up

May the wind be at your back

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Remember that first time you lost control of a car on an icy road?

It’s surreal. You turn the wheel and what you’re used to happening doesn’t happen. The car doesn’t turn. Now what? It doesn’t seem to matter where you turn, the car is going to do its thing.

Panic creeps in. You tighten your grip on the wheel as if that would restore sanity. It doesn’t. You’re on the shoulder of the road – well, that can’t be too bad, but in the swerving headlights you see a stone wall and the trunks of big trees standing in the snow like sentinels outside a castle.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you remember being told not to step on the brake … “you’re only going to worsen the skid.” But instinct tells you otherwise. You slam on the brakes – anything from hitting a tree or the wall. The car reacts. It’s not what you expect. The headlights return to the road – and there’s a split second of relief – only now you’ve spun around and you’re facing a pair of oncoming headlights … the guy that was following you. The muscles in your leg tighten; you’re pushing the brake pedal to the floorboard. Your passenger is frozen in silence; you wish you’d never volunteered to take her home.

The car has slowed and that’s something to be thankful for. Fortunately, too, you’re still in a spin and the oncoming headlights veer out of view. Now it’s back to the trees and the wall. The car slides off the road and into a mound of snow. It’s not a solid sound, but more of a thud. It’s all happening in slow motion, although it can’t be more than 10 seconds since you first lost control. You feel the car has found solid ground, albeit snow and that wall is getting closer. Then, just as suddenly, it’s calm; the headlights reflect off the snow. You’ve stopped. You can finally breathe. Your passenger is wide-eyed. She says nothing.

I should remember her name, but I don’t. I couldn’t have been driving for more than a year. I was probably 17 and I was behind the wheel of my grandfather’s car, a 1941 Cadillac that I had learned to drive on because it was an automatic shift – one of the first, my father always said. It was built like a tank and I feel the car that we had been heading for would have come out the worst for the encounter. That car stopped. It was a friend who had been at the same dance. He joined me to look at the Cadillac, which, as it turned out, I had no trouble backing out of the snow bank. There was no damage and no need to inform my parents of the incident.

Oddly, those 15 seconds of terror flashed back when a crackling noise reverberated through the hull of my rowing boat Sunday morning. Instantly I knew I had hit ice. I scolded myself for not considering there could be ice on the bay. I wasn’t keeping an eye for it. This was skim ice, sheets of it the size of a room that were being carried from the cove by the outgoing tide.

I leaned into the oars, cracking holes in the ice to easily crunch through it, turn and retreat.

I never felt threatened or that I was losing control.

That hasn’t always been the case with boats and ice. Many years ago following a hard February freeze the weather warmed up and the bay looked to be ice-free. It was blowing out of the north, yet the water was relatively calm. I found my rhythm, back to the wind, when suddenly the boat sped up. I was between stokes and the oars were free, but now I was on top of a sheet of ice that covered Occupasstuxet Cove. At first it was exhilarating until it occurred to me that if the ice beneath the boat broke there would be no way to get out.

That feeling of the loss of control started to settle in like the chill seeping into my limbs. I was foolish to have even thought of going out. I dared not try cracking the ice with the oars. There was no way of reversing momentum until I thought of the wind. Could it blow me free? Balancing the extended oars with my elbows, I opened my jacket, spreading it like a sail. Gently so as not to crack the ice, I rocked the boat and ever so slowly I slid off the ice pack.

My ice encounter Sunday was nothing like this. It was merely a reminder of winter, but also of control – or rather, that feeling when you lose control.

Loss of control can trigger anger, panic, fear and other feelings. Psychologists surely have a list. Loss of control can also be a learning experience.

My advice: keep an eye out for ice, tap the brakes when there are icy conditions and don’t head out on the bay in the winter unless the wind is at your back.

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