When did I become chicken?

Here I am on an Austrian press junket, driving in convoy with an engineer in front and, three cars back, a smart aleck from Car and Driver bringing up the rear. The roads are exactly the kind that car writers love — twisty, lousy with gorgeous scenery, and slick with old ice and new snow. The kind of roads that show off handling and braking in a way a straight patch of asphalt can’t, while offering a breathtaking photo op every eight feet.

Suddenly, I realize I’m afraid. I’m afraid that, with the next blind turn, I’m going to lose control of the wee coupe under me and sail off into the considerable chasm between the road and the mountainside. I’m afraid to push the car hard. I’m afraid to go as fast as the 60-something engineer (who, to be fair, is driving an all-wheel-drive version of the car). I’m afraid they’re going to fly me home in cargo.

But mostly I’m afraid I have become one of those snow-blind idiots who seizes up at the first flake.

Is it because we haven’t had any practice snow this year at home in Toronto? Because I’m over 40, half-orphaned and feeling my own mortality? Is the universe trying to tell me it’s time to move to Florida already?

When did this happen? When did I become a lazy, citified featherweight winter driver who can’t handle a couple of twisties and some ice?

Taking hold of myself, I carefully brake just enough in the turns that I can begin to regain my confidence, but not so much that the guys behind me will realize I have become a complete wuss.

With the kilometres, the fear passes and I recover my former, non-wussy self in time to get out of the coupe and into a slightly more substantial all-wheel-drive version for the next leg.

On this route, instead of following the engineer, I’m following a legendary rally champion, Rauno Aaltonen, who is Scandinavian flick-ing all over the damn road, the big show-off. Now, granted, Aaltonen is Finnish, so he should be quite comfortable with the whole winter driving thing. Then again, I am Canadian, so I can’t plausibly use that as an excuse. And Aaltonen was born in 1938.

When at last we stop to stretch our legs and admire the scenery, I ask Aaltonen what he thinks is the biggest key to good winter driving. “Know what you’re doing,” he says. I nod sagely. This ain’t my first rodeo.

I decide to let myself off the hook. I seem to have regained my snow legs and, after all, driving in snow is something I haven’t had to do in nine months. It’s bound to take a little getting used to, right? Still, I’m bothered by my brief spell of cowardice.

At dinner, I ask the engineer what he thinks is the key to winter driving. “Good tires,” he says, stabbing a forkful of fondue.

At the end of the evening, they give us plastic sleds, only slightly narrower than my behind, on which to carom down the steep Alpine road back to the hotel (which, by the way, has not been closed to traffic, although it does seem to have thinned).

As I awkwardly squat on to what is obviously, and cruelly, a child’s toy and push off with my hands, my braver (stupider?) colleagues whiz past, whooping their way down the hill. I begin to pick up speed and become aware that off to my right is a flimsy lip of a snowbank, then a sheer drop into the darkness.

I quickly learn that leaning left makes me go right, and vice versa, so I suck in a cold breath and whoosh on. The only problem is that while my brain has figured this out, my body insists it make no sense, and several times I correct my course by colliding with the snowbank. To get going again, I dig in my heels and push back with my legs, ergo stuffing gobs of snow up my pants, and then haul the wretched thing to port, and use my hands, gorilla-style, to get moving again.

Every time I come to a level spot of any length, I glide to a full stop and have to push off with my hands again. On one particularly long, flat stretch, I have to get off the sled (by throwing myself sideways into the snow) and carry the damn thing around the bend.

So now I’m not scared of winter anymore. I’m just really, really angry at it. (Nevertheless, I did put a kickass set of snow tires on to the ol’ minivan the second I got home.)