Round and Round She Goes

My neck hurts, my back is spasming, and when Rob did a u-turn in a parking lot today, I got nauseous. All souvenirs from yesterday's Winter Driving Course. And totally worth it.

Rob found the class for me and gently sort of almost insisted I take it. You see, I am a huge chicken when it comes to driving in snow. Being a native Californian with little interest in skiing, I never really had a need to learn to drive in the white stuff. The result is that at the slightest hint of anything frozen-ish falling from the sky, I sequester myself inside Woodhaven until the roads are clear. Even hail makes me a bit twitchy.

The self-imprisonment is fine and even productive...for awhile. But since we live on a hill at what is often above the snow line, it really isn't smart or realistic to assume I can just wait out every cold storm that blows by. So with a determination to put on my big girl snowpants and learn how to drive like a grown-up, I signed up for the winter driving class as an early Christmas present. A present to which one of us wasn't exactly clear.

The class was held at Portland's International Raceway...down a hill, through the woods, and over a river. I was actually signed up for last Saturday's class but it was cancelled due to weather. Yep, with snow and ice on the roads and a forecasted high of 16 degrees, the wise driving folks blessedly called and asked if I might be able to come a week later since the unusually cold weather wasn't good for their fancy training car. I was grateful because it had been occurring to me for several panicky days that I was going to need the class in order to get to the class.

The training was a 3-hour adventure. The first hour was spent in a small classroom in a portable on the raceway. The rest was spent spinning around on asphalt in a contraption called a SkidCar -- a fancied-up Toyota Camry on hydraulics that very realistically simulated what it is like to slide around on ice. It basically looked like a sedan with training wheels.

There were six students and two instructors. The other woman student had spun out in her Honda Accord and wanted to get unspooked. There was a man about my age with his teenage son, and then two other young guys who were both probably younger than my marriage. One drove a tricked out Mustang and swaggered about the portable.

Our classroom instruction involved a toy race car and a road diagram on a board. Aside from the lack of felt and a judge, it was just like the courtroom scene in that episode of the Brady Bunch when that Liar Liar Pants on Fire Mr. Duggan tries to blame Mrs. Brady for their fender-bender in the grocery store parking lot. Oh, if only I had had a briefcase to toss on the floor!

Sorry. Got off track.

Back in the portable, we learned about the physics of weight and motion. And the power of eye-hand coordination. And that a lot of driving successfully in slick conditions is totally unnatural and counter-intuitive...so we were all going to suck at it at first. Yippee.

With that, we arranged ourselves into two groups and headed to the SkidCars.

My instructor was Chris. He was a race-car driver who looked a bit like Drew Lachey. Very calm, easy going guy with nerves and equilibrium of steel.

My car-mates were James and Tristan, the father and teen son. Tristan had had his license for two whole months. James shared that as soon as Tristan's sister has her license, she and Mom are going to take the class, too. Truly one of the more brilliant parenting moves I've seen in a long time.

Because of how we randomly sat in the car, I was the lucky dog to got to try each new maneuver first. I think all three of us thought we would prove the "you are all going to suck at first" prophecy wrong: me because of my straight-A student approach to all things school; James because he's been driving for decades with a perfect record; and Tristan because he's 16 and knows everything. Just my guesses, mind you; I have no proof of two of those statements.

We basically learned and practiced three different scenarios: a front-wheel skid, a rear-wheel skid, and a death-defying combo of the two. In all cases, we were out on the race track with little orange cones arranged in an obstacle course of figure-eights, straight-aways, and slaloms. We rotated in a pattern: Chris would demonstrate; then we'd switch places and I would drive for about 10 minutes; then James, then Tristan. We did this for two hours.

I was concerned that I wasn't going to know the difference between a front-wheel skid and a rear-wheel skid...until I experienced them. A front-wheel skid is a gentle little thing where you think you are losing control of the car but you really just need to turn the steering wheel ever so slightly the opposite direction and voila, all better.

A rear-wheel skid is where you are certain you are going to die, especially if Tristan is driving. It is where the back of the car starts spinning around like a poltergeist and the only thing that seems to help, in addition to turning the wheel frantically in the other direction, is to accelerate. The acceleration thing makes no sense whatsoever because going faster is the very last thing you want to do and yet it works because it shifts weight backwards to the tires that are slipping. It's freakin' cool!

Despite our egos, all three of us messed up...a lot. We went around and around and around. I got so flustered in one spin that I accidentally hit the windshield wiper controls and gave the windshield a straight-A cleaning. James perfectly knocked over 5 cones. And Tristan treated us to a 360 turn in both directions during one skid, which took some impressively incorrect over-correcting according to Chris. Over the course of the morning, Tristan also managed to produce that pleasant aroma of burned rubber, and later, smoke. On the smoke skid, I looked at James next to me in the backseat and said, "Two months, huh?"

Overall, the class was fantastic. Absolutely one of the best uses of time and money in a long time. I wish I had taken a class like this years ago. And like any good student, I took notes. Here's what I learned:

• "Brake straight" -- only apply your brakes when you are going straight in order to avoid or minimize spin-outs.

• Slow is your friend. Going slow is actually the best defense in driving in slick conditions. And by slow I mean less than 10mph. "Drive like a grandma" is my new snow motto.  No offense, Grandma.

• Look where you want to go, not where you are heading. Due to the built-in eye-hand coordination thing that we humans have, we tend to steer where our eyes are. So in the event of a spin, keep your eyes on where you want to go, not on the ditch or car you seem to be careening towards. Because the more you fixate on that ditch or car, the more likely that is exactly where you are going to end up.

• When you are spinning, turn the wheel the opposite of the direction you are heading. For a front-wheel spin, you really only need to straighten out the tires. For a rear-wheel spin, you pretty much crank the wheel as much as you can.

• Words are important, but there is nothing that can solidify a concept as well as experience. Slipping and sliding around in that SkidCar was so beneficial for me. I found out what the sensation is and realized it doesn't mean certain death, even with Tristan at the wheel. I also have some confidence now that despite the natural panic, I will have a good idea what to do if I am ever in a slippery driving situation. This means I might actually leave the house despite a light dusting of snow.  Merry Christmas to me!  Or Rob?  Both?  Hmmm.

• Dramamine is a miracle. As is my decision to carry it in my purse after our cruise last summer because "you never know." A half-hour into our two hour spin class, I furtively popped one pill. In retrospect, I should have chased it with some pain meds.

If you live in an area with occasional snow, or if you just want to pretend you are Bo or Luke Duke, I highly recommend finding a professional driving class and taking yourself for a spin. Just be sure to pack the Tylenol and Dramamine.