So people have been asking me why I am happy to be alive. I'll explain.
To be honest, this joie de vivre is fading, now that I'm home and back into the same old routine. I keep vowing to myself that I will go through every day as if it were my last... and then I lay in bed all day, not even getting out of my PJs while reading about e.g. Native Americans (most of whom, according to my AmLit teacher, refer to themselves as Indians), and English Around the World. So much for the old clichés.
This is gonna be a long post, so if you don't have a lot of time, save this for later. Just a warning!
Anyways. As one or two of you, my dear readers, might know, the University Choir went to rehearsal camp in Skálholt (in the countryside) 8-10th February. We left the city on Friday the 8th, also known as the day the deepest
depression ever to hit the island in the history of meteorological monitoring in Iceland, ravaged the country. Rain and/or snow, temperature around 0 °C, and most importantly: wind speed over 30 m/s.
And the choir decided this was the time to drive into the countryside.
Contrary to all predictions, however, as the roads weren't icy anymore (with a couple of small exceptions) none of the choir members had any trouble getting to Skálholt.
None but yours truly, that is.
See, I was in a
Nissan Almera driven by a friend of mine, and then there was one (spindly) guy in the back seat. So the car wasn't very heavy. Also, the car had all season tyres; not studded tyres, which is generally more convenient in Icelandic winters.
But we were pretty confident, and were close behind another choir member driving gigantic jeep - 4X4
Nissan Patrol if I remember correctly - who had ropes and a shovel in his trunk. If there would be any trouble, we'd have the jeep to help us.
Considering what happened, however, that is debatable.
About 5 minutes before we came to the turn into the side road that leads to Skálholt - 10-15 minutes before we'd actually arrive at our destination - we had to cross a bridge. The road in front of the bridge was a bit of a slope, and icy. 10-20 metres of the road (my own tentative estimate) before the bridge were basically an ice rink. If we had continued driving at the same speed, we probably would have crossed the bridge without trouble. Like everybody else had. However, the jeep slowed down as it reached the ice. It slid around a bit. Inga (my friend who drove the car I was in) obviously had to slow down as well, in order to avoid crashing into the jeep. Which nearly did happen, actually. But soon we had more trouble to distract us from the first near-accident.
As we were slowly sliding down the icy slope - being blown from side to side by the wind at the same time - we saw the jeep in front of us literally sliding 180°, stopping with it's front side close to the bank of snow on the right side of the road - and the back side facing (erm, a bit of a contradiction there. But you know what I mean) the left side of the road, which happened to be a straight fall, 5-8 metres perhaps, down into a river. As this was happening, we continued sliding down the road, slowly enough to kill us with suspense (though obviously we didn't), and finally the brakes, which Inga had had her foot firmly placed on since we hit the ice, stopped the car. Diagonally facing the left side of the road - i.e. the river - and less than a metre from the edge.
Can you blame us for panicking?
Well, we didn't panic SERIOUSLY. More inwardly, and calmly, because we were afraid to even move, in case the car would go off the edge. Steini, the guy who was driving the jeep, somehow managed to get out of his vehicle and walk (I can't think of a more appropriate word for how he did it) over to our car, and the first thing he said through the half-open window was: "Are we gonna discuss this any further..." (a phrase he uses frequently, I have found out)
Steini and our spindly back seat passenger Palli exchanged a few words, and the immediate plan was basically to talk to the people behind us, who happened to be driving jeeps properly prepared for this kind of weather. Local people, that is.
We realised, though, that it was only a matter of time when the brakes wouldn't hold any longer, and we had no idea what the guys behind us were gonna do. So we had Palli call 112, just in case. While he was being connected to one person after another - we knew this because he described our situation more than once and more than twice - we watched Steini and a properly-clad man shovel a bit of snow out of the way so the jeep could be driven into the bank of snow and therefore get some stability. And not slide backwards into the river.
When they had got the jeep into a safe position, the properly-clad man came over to us and started shoveling gravel underneath the car. He was nearly blown off the edge of the road. We were amazed at how this stranger was pretty much risking his life to help us. Granted, we were pretty much in a life-or-death situation, but still. A perfect stranger.
At some point during those 30 minutes or so that we were stuck there (I really didn't have any sense of time; I was in too much shock), three ginormous jeeps crossed the bridge and somehow drove past us - and stopped, naturally, to help. The jeeps all had "Mountaineers of Iceland" in big letters on the side, so it was obvious why they had ventured out in this weather (they certainly were not silly city-people). I don't know if it was one of those jeeps, or one of the ones that were behind us who pulled us up to the right side of the road, where there was a clear bit of asphalt - and stability. All I know is that we were safe.
While this was all happening, we in the Nissan Almera couldn't really do anything. Inga tried to phone her dad, who had been especially opposed to her doing this. She gave him a lot of ammo for future "I told you so"'s. I tried to call some of the girls in the choir who were already in Skálholt and I whom had received millions of missed call messages from. The reception was really bad there, so no contact with the people who were waiting for us, wondering why we hadn't arrived yet. Apparently a couple of them were really worried, actually.
When I wasn't trying to get reception on my phone, I very casually put my cards into one of my jacket pockets (thank goodness for zippers!), my pill box into the other one, and made sure I had my mobile and keys in my jeans pockets. I also gave thanks that I had left my iPod at home. I did this just in case we'd have to quickly get out of the car, without being able to bring any of our stuff.
What? I had never been in this situation before, I had no idea what was going to happen! Better safe than sorry I say - though we weren't exactly safe.
I didn't tell Inga and Palli what I was doing - we were intentionally NOT telling each other about how scared we were. Inga, for example, didn't say anything when she looked out her window and realised how high the fall into the river was.
Well. When we had finally been pulled up onto the safe side of the road, we wondered what was going to happen next. (While we were waiting, we celebrated being safe for the moment by taking pictures of each other - I managed a pretty convincing scared-to-death-expression - and listening to The Fugees' version of Killing Me Softly.) Steini or Höskuldur (don't remember which one) came over and told us what the plan was; a huge tractor from a nearby farm was gonna try and pull the jeep across the bridge, with the rope really short. Then the idea was that they were going to give us, in the small car, a lift over to Skálholt. However, when the jeep was safely on the other side of the river, the tractor came back, the driver tied the Nissan Almera to it and pulled us across the bridge as well.
I can't even express how happy we were to finally be safe. I opened the window and yelled "TAKK!!!" to the tractor guy when he was passing the car, having untied the rope. He didn't turn around - probably thinking, as we all were, "Stupid city-people!"
Then another guy driving a jeep led the way to Skálholt, where we were warmly greeted. Ten minutes after arriving there choir rehearsal started, and we were singing as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Well, aside from the fact that I (and Inga too, I think) had enormous butterflies batting their wings in my tummy. Happy to be there.
Whether we would have got caught in this dilemma if the jeep hadn't slowed down we do not know. Really it doesn't matter now, because we're all safe and sound. And alive.
QotD: Buffy: "Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live... for me." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer