White knuckle drive to school

No one walks to my son’s school. Why?

D’s new Montessori school is up in the hills. No, it’s in the mountains. Like, my ears pop on the drive up.  It’s 8 degrees cooler up there. We don’t live on the mountain, so the drive to school feels downright perilous as I get used to it. I sit like a granny leaning in toward the steering wheel gripping it with both hands.

It’s all two lane roads. Or sometimes, one and a half lanes.  You know, cause there’s a precipice next to ya.

There are three ways we’ve taken to get up there (and countless more variations). I categorize them as “Least Scary”, “Scary” and “Holy Hell Don’t Ever Take This Road Again” (that last one was coming from Walmart. My phone/GPS was almost outta battery and I became quite nervous it would quit and I wouldn’t know where to go!) This pic below doesn’t show the AT LEAST 30 turns onto different streets you need to make.

“Holy Hell Don’t Ever Take This Road Again”

The hairpin turns are one thing – they’re the ‘look out your left door window instead of your windshield we’re turning so tightly’ turns – but the steep hills are another. Have you ever given your SUV a ‘running’ start up a steep hill? Or thought that you should avoid this road at all costs if it’s raining? yeah. like that. (not to mention that with parked cars they go down to one lane, or you have the random person WALKING on the road. Oh, and stray dogs strolling through.  Watch out for them. I don’t need to step on the gas for the first 8 minutes of our drive home! Seriously!

There are many homes, a hospital, sports bars etc up in the hills, so most of it is populous.  Those people have great views.  And I need to remind myself they don’t need to contend with snow, so steep driveways aren’t horrible.

View on the way down on the least scary route

On his second day of school, D wanted me to reach out and hold his hand. I was able to for a few minutes.  Then I told him I needed to put two hands on the wheel cause I didn’t want to die. No…I didn’t word it like that. But I’ve never concentrated so hard on driving since I was 15 in driver’s ed with Mr. Trepchik.

Here’s a crappy video of the last leg of the “scary” route up the hill. The first 50 seconds are nearly continuous ascent.