Jun 20, 2016 3 min read

Monday dawned sunny and bright. The house was quiet. I drank a leisurely cup of coffee before planning to leave for my daughter’s college orientation.

We were told to arrive between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., and we left at 7 for the 45-minute drive. About three minutes in, we came up behind a brine truck was traveling about six miles an hour. No biggie. We only had to follow it for three miles before our turn.

Just as we went to make our turn, I noticed the truck’s turn signal was on, and my stomach sank, as I realized we would have to follow this truck another six miles or so. We crept slowly along, at a snail’s pace, you might say, praying our next turn would arrive.

About 20 minutes of our 45-minute drive had passed, and we made it less than 10 miles. The truck turned onto the interstate in front of us, but I was able to pass, and we went along with relative ease for the next 20 minutes. We exited with decent time remaining until we were scheduled to arrive, but alas that was not to be. For the first turn we made off of the interstate put us behind a concrete truck, which was going – you guessed it – about six miles an hour.

The windy turns of West Virginia are no place to get stuck behind a concrete truck. Even when they begin to get close to the speed limit, there is about five feet until they are required to hit their brakes. We followed the concrete truck in seeming slow motion for six or seven miles until, blessedly, it turned. The rest of our trip, we were able to go normal speed, although our 45-minute drive had become an hour and 15 minutes.

As we pulled into the campus to begin looking for parking, we had about 10 minutes to spare before the END of the registration period. My relief was to be short-lived, however, as it dawned on me while parking the car that I had not completed my column for this esteemed publication, and was between 45 minutes and an hour and a half from my keyboard (depending upon traffic).

I called my sister, who is no stranger to this request, and pleaded with her to type as I recounted this tale. She obliged, thankfully, and I paced a brick pathway for the next 20 minutes while I dictated to the world’s greatest sister. And then I slid into my seat in time for the opening remarks by the college president. I began to munch my breakfast, finally feeling the tension draining from my body. If I’d have known how the morning would go, I would have completed my column before we left – and could have leisurely enjoyed my cup of coffee from behind the wheel. Lord knows I had time.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.