Dan Leahy taught me what it looks like to drive fearlessly and competently through a thick blizzard of a snow storm one Thanksgiving when we made our way from Boston to Marathon, NY to visit Maryrose and Donn. It also happened to be the first time I met Bethany and Dan, as Chad and I had been together for about a year at that point.
It snowed pretty much the entire time, getting heavier and worse the closer we got to Marathon. At one point we turned off the highway to go on smaller local roads, which turned out to be one large hill after another. Dan masterfully navigated up and down these hills, carefully accelerating toward the bottom of each hill to give us enough momentum to get up to the top of the next one, with some slipping and sliding along the way. This went well until one particular hill when we got about half way up and then the car just lost its momentum and started sliding backward, at which point, Dan executed a truly impressive zero-traction three-point-turn that felt more like skiing than driving to get us back down that hill and back onto the highway, which hard as it was to believe, was in better shape than the side roads.
Eventually we made it safely to Marathon and had a lovely time, but every time I drive that route, and every time I do some difficult snow driving I remember that trip.
