CHILLAX

What’s so funny about this? So it was late January 1969. It was my first winter in the US since 1964. I’d been in Africa for the last three years and hadn’t seen any snow or been in any freezing weather. Before going to Africa, I loved the snow and went skiing every winter. But I felt like a winter newbie again. My friend’s family were planning to spend a Sunday skiing about three hours north of New York City in the foothills of the Catskill mountains. At the last minute my friend bailed. That left his wife, his six year old son and me. So up we drove and had a great time. It was snowing when we left the city, it was snowing while we skied, but around 2:00 in the afternoon we noticed that it was coming down harder and faster so we decided to head home. Trouble was, so did everyone else. We plodded along the NY State Thruway for about three hours when the traffic came to a dead halt. It was 5:45 pm. We had maybe a third of a tank of gas - enough to make it back to the city in normal tra