Driving out of the parking lot was all right. Driving from the parking lot to the road was slow but all right. Driving on the road... that was another matter.
Steph and Jess spent the first few minutes chatting with Lucas and his wife, Heather, about Avatar, but after that, the couple's concentration was entirely on the traffic.
Traffic? Hardly. The travelers were faced with a mess of spinning wheels kicking up snow, sideways cars across lanes, people waving at other people to back up, turn around, get out of the way. The road, of course, went up a hill; the cars, for the most part, did not.
After backing up and weaving around and crawling diagonally forward, Lucas (colorfully) gave up. Heather called the other car to tell them the plan. The convoy pulled slowly around, and lumbered off in the opposite direction.
It worked, for a while. If a road got too backed up, they simply changed their route. One-way street? Too bad. No one could go more than five mph anyway, and the traffic in the other direction certainly wasn't going anywhere.
But alas, it was still too much. They knew it was only a matter of time before they got stuck, so between them, a plan was hatched to squish everyone into one car for better traction. They would leave the other car in the parking lot where some of them worked, a place called UPMC Sports Medicine or something similar.
As they drove toward the parking lot, Lucas grumbled,
"This is a dumb idea. This is such a bad idea. The parking lot won't even be plowed. We should turn around. This is such a stupid idea."
They didn't turn around.
It was a bad idea.
Of course, both the cars got stuck. Lucas and Heather and their friends got out of their separate cars to convene in the snow-covered parking lot (and help push out the car of a woman on the cleaning staff, who was just leaving. She promptly went not in the direction of the road but rather deeper into the parking lot. "Man, we're gonna have to push her out again," said Lucas).
In the car, Jess and Steph were texting furiously before their phones died, trying to tell everyone (except their parents, of course - they weren't that dense) what had happened and where they were, since by this time it was midnight.
Heather got back in the car to try and start it while the others pushed - no luck.
"I think at this point, we'd better just walk it," she said. Steph and Jess nodded, not particularly surprised.
They prepared, stowing phones, zipping coats, and the like. Heather got an extra vest out of the trunk and rummaged around for socks - still no luck.
Steph was suddenly very grateful for the hooded sweater under her hoodless coat.
And so again the party set off, on foot this time, giddy and making jokes, since there are only two ways to deal in these types of situations and the other is much less pleasant.
As they left the parking lot, the cleaning woman drove out behind them, to their amazement. They were even more amazed when she quite impossibly drove out behind them again two minutes later. (Perhaps the weather was making our travelers somewhat delusional, and they were having a mass hallucination; or perhaps there was a blip in the Matrix.)
They then proceeded to stumble valiantly through feet - plural - of snow, down roads, over bridges, under bridges, dodging the occasional car. At one point an idiot came sliding sideways down the street, swung out into the middle of the intersection, did an impressive series of donuts, and spun off in another direction. Our travelers jumped out of the way and then watched, eyebrows raised and mouths open.
They continued on. The snow fell in small wet flakes that hit the skin like needles and refused to melt, so that snow piled on their heads and shoulders and bags. Eventually Lucas's friends broke off in another direction, heading for home. The rest struggled through a buried Shenley Park to reach campus, where Lucas and Heather pointed the way and then also headed for home. One of the other students went with them, since she lived on that side of campus. The other student and the mother continued past campus toward Craig, where they apparently lived.
And so we have Jess and Steph making the final leg of the journey across campus, from the very farthest corner of Scaife Hall to the warmth and safety of Morewood Gardens. As in all great journeys, these last steps are the most difficult, as the girls struggle up the hill through snow past their knees, fighting to keep their footing on stairs made into ice mountains and trying not to fall over when they make a wrong step. The snow comes down harder and the wind picks up, and Steph, who was supposed to have taken a pill cocktail over an hour ago but of course wasn't able to, begins to curse her ability to bear children.
And then it is over. One a.m. The girls stand in the Morewood entryway, blinking in the dim light at the closed door to the Underground. Eventually they make their way up the stairs, swipe their ID cards, cross the breezeway, ride the elevator - and collapse in their rooms, soaked, frozen, exhausted.
They have conquered. They have won.
They want food.
After saying goodnight to Jess and changing into dry clothes, Steph called her mother to reassure her that they were alive (she had just found a text message on her phone with a worried '?' at the end). Then she warmed up some (canned) green beans to munch on while her noodles cooked. After a bowl of mac and cheese and a trip upstairs (the latter to check on Jess, whose fingers had gone red and numb), Steph fell snuggly into her snug bed, and dreamt snug dreams, and stayed there until three in the afternoon.
"Isn't Avatar such an awesome movie?" asked Jess the next day.
"Totally awesome," said Steph.
Fin.
[Inaccurate route; but you get the idea]
