I hit the ditch...

This was after I'd been pulled out halfway. I was too mad to take any
other pictures.

Well I finally met the neighbors this morning. Too bad it was because I BURIED my truck in the ditch! I’m talking waist deep snow buried. I was headed to work this morning and was about 1.5 miles from home. When all of a sudden my truck hit some ice/snow and pulled to the left and BANG! In the ditch. I almost thought I was going to roll the beast! I shouted a few very loud and obscene words, and I’m sure there is a cloud of them still hovering around where I hit the ditch. I tried calling my hubby, and texting him too. He didn’t answer. I figured his phone was on vibrate or something so I decided to try and find help. The snow was deep and there was NO way I was getting out by myself.   If I was able to get out on the driver’s side it would have been about waist deep. So I crawled up and over the passenger’s side and barely got the passengers door open. Those things are heavier than you think! Especially when you are almost flipped sideways! Then I proceed to walk to my neighbor’s house which was only a few hundred feet away. They are the neighbors who have a big outdoor roping arena and some horses. I’m so very thankfully they were home and were super nice! The lady got her husband up and he went to warm up his truck. We chatted for a while about horses. Her son competes in high school rodeo mostly roping and steer wrestling (bulldogging?) They also used to do team penning and cutting and their daughter did barrels and poles. Turns out we also know some of the same people. The horse world can be pretty small sometimes! Turns out she won a saddle back in 1997 with my friend’s mom in team penning.  I her husband came up to the house and said he was ready to get me unstuck. I said good bye and left her my phone number in case she ever needed to let me know my horses or dogs had come over for a visit. She said that it does happen and they usually just throw the visiting horses into a pen and then wait for the owners to come get them.  I’m glad that my neighbors are horse people!

Her husband and I headed out to the disaster I created to assess the situation. It was bad. We turned around so we could try and pull my pickup back out. He hooked his big ol Ford F250 to the hitch of Dodge ram and started pulling. We tried for about 10 minutes. And we only got half way out. It was then when my other neighbor pulled up and said that her husband was coming with his tractor to help out. I laughed and introduced myself. Can’t believe we needed a tractor too! BUT I am very glad that I was within walking distance when I got stuck, and that my neighbors are nice enough to help me out. So we waited in the f250 until sure enough a big ol Case IH showed up and hooked on to my hitch. A couple of good hard pulls and I was out! Thank goodness!  I was beginning to think I would have to leave her there until spring! Even then it would have only gotten worse as I’m sure she would have just rolled down into the field! I thanked everyone for helping me out and asked if I could repay them in anyway they said don’t worry about it, and they were glad to help. Just as I was headed towards work I saw hubby coming down the road. He had gotten my missed calls and texts as he was pulling into work and then turned around and headed to help me out.

Today just really made me realize how lucky I am to live where I do. I’ve always been pretty lucky to have great neighbors. When we were living in town in our townhouse neighbors on both sides were really nice. Of course there was the brief time when the house connected to the north side of us was being rented and I had to call the cops on them for having a loud party. Hey I’m all for partying, don’t get me wrong! But slamming the back door every 45 seconds, causing my dogs to go into a big frenzy at 4 in the morning is a bit much. The beer cans they threw in my back yard were a nice touch too. They were kicked out and then some really awesome people bought the house and I really liked them. Even if our dogs HATED each other and we had to make sure they weren’t in the back yard when mine were. We always had a good chuckle about it though. We often said we should just rip down our fence and let the dogs get over it! My neighbor to the south was really nice too, if she had her snow blower out and saw me struggling with my shovel she would come blow out my sidewalk and driveway for me. I realize that in other parts of the country things like this wouldn’t happen. I’m so glad that my neighbors who were strangers until today were able to help me out!