ballet on ice

I have lived in Colorado for almost 30 years as a car driving adult and never had a lot of trouble getting around.  I have never owned a 4x4.  I have had some white knuckle drives and more often, slow slow drives where you wish you had packed a lunch and a book.
Today was a very scary drive to the barn.  The weather report said that the snow was coming into the area in 'bands' which is kind of normal I think, but this was a little different.
I left the house around noon to give Nina her beet pulp and change her blanket,  in light snow, the side roads were slippery and the main roads were not too bad, there was enough traffic to keep the snow mostly churned up into slush.  It was 25 degrees.  I stopped at Walmart to pick up wiper blades....long overdue, and when I came out it started snowing hard.  The temps dropped in a few minutes to 18 degrees and suddenly the roads were solid ice, no snow to be found. 
I found myself driving down a four lane road in way too much traffic and suddenly one at a time we were all hitting a frozen rut in the road where a big vehicle had changed lanes while the snow was wet and soft.  A couple of vehicle bounced off at angles, hitting curbs on BOTH sides of the street.  I found myself doing lovely slow motion pirouettes down the road with no more control than if I had been sitting on the roof.  Eventually I got enough control to swing off into a side street where the deeper snow helped me stop.  Miraculously nobody appeared to have hit anybody.  We all regrouped and proceeded on, now at about 5mph, down from our speedy 20mph that we were travelling before.
I drove all the rest of the way to the barn on this thick layer of polished ice.
I then spent much more time than I needed at the barn, feeding Nina, changing her blanket and talking to her about the feasibility of walking down to Burger King for dinner and spending the night in my car.
I REALLY did not want to go back out on the skating rink.
Then the heavy snow stopped, the temps bounced back up to around 25, the cars started churning up the ice into slush again and the roads were fine.  I made it NEARLY home and the cycle started again.  This time a couple of roads were blocked off by police where traffic had spun out and come to a standstill on hills, not very big hills.
I mentally computed the most flat route and crawled safely home.
I am having a cup of coffee, reading and writing on blogs and trying to decipher the cryptic directions on the package for changing the wiper blade.  I think I will bag the directions and just do it myself, I'm feeling fairly invincible.