Flashback to Fahrvergnugen

It never fails. The weekend I pick to visit my cousin in Vermont is, of course, the first weekend this winter when it actually snows in New England. Never mind that it’s mid-January and nary a flake has fallen.

Now, I’m not afraid of driving in the snow. I’m not really afraid of driving fast through anything. I’m one of those people who drives offensively, not defensively. But I’d been putting off servicing my VW Passat, because, darn it, I’m broke. The holidays just ended and I have credit card bills to pay. But bald tires, snow and the Green Mountains of Vermont just don’t mix.

As I started my 3-hour journey back to Connecticut on Martin Luther King Day, I quickly realized that there was no way I wasn’t gonna make it. My front tires were spinning, unable to grip the road, as 18-wheelers barrelled up Route 4 behind me from West Rutland to Route 7 in Rutland. Other drivers were clearly annoyed by my lack of speed and my Connecticut license plate. My speedometer read 70, but I couldn’t have been going more than 30 miles an hour.

Scary, to say the least. If my car was this bad on what was essentially a “big hill,” there was no way I could make it over the eight other mountain passes to get back home.

I had to do something. My daughter was in the back seat watching a DVD, oblivious to the situation. Luckily, I’ve been back and forth visiting Rutland since I was a kid, and I remembered there was a VW dealership nearby. If I could just generate enough inertia to get over the top of Rt. 4 and then retain enough control to make it to the bottom in one piece…

I’d like to personally thank the Fahrvergnugen folks at Kinney Motors in Rutland for taking me in and helping me out. They even kept my daughter happily occupied for 2 1/2 hours in the waiting area. We made it home safe and sound.

It snowed again this morning in Connecticut and my new tires are gripping the road like velcro.

(I still want to move to Hawaii.)