On Tuesday night I had a Forest Gump moment.

With my car fully loaded, everything that was going to sell out of the house and all the garbage neatly collected into bags I was all set to leave early the following morning. It was 8PM and with the fridge fully cleaned out and my pots packed I had no choice but to drive down the street for a Coffee.

On my way I received a phone call from an Indie studio manager asking for my input on how to market his game. Since I always try to support Indy developers and this studio happened to have a game I was extremely fond of (Linked Realms) we started chatting about the various ways that a game can be promoted. Before I knew it an hour had passed and I was still driving. I set my GPS to Atlanta to get ready for the trips and had been mindlessly following its directions during my chat. I figured since I had gone this far, and everything was already in the car I may as well keep driving.

About two hours later as I was driving through the mountains of Washington snow started pouring down. Having grown up in Russia and spending at least a decade in both NY and MA, I’ve seen my share of snow, but I have never seen anything like this. Within about 15 minutes there was a foot of snow on the ground. I started to lose control of my all-wheel drive car and decided taking an exit would be preferable to death. Exit? Death? Exit? Death? I chose wisely.

After a night of sleeping in a parking lot, next to a few other stranded travelers, waking up every 45 minutes to rewarm my car, I woke up to sun and plowed roads.

14 hours later and some amazing sites in my rearview I find myself dead tired at a super 8 in Provo Utah, which as it happens is the home of the Indy developer who called me out of the blue and started my journey. I think I may have to do more than one breakfast tomorrow.