| | I was in an accident. I'm okay. No other cars were involved.
But my poor Lancelot, my shining white night. He protected me from harm, but to his own misfortune.
I was driving from my CPR re-certification to Jacksonville to pick up a form I needed for UAMS. I'd just gotten on I-67/167, at the Kiehl entrance ramp. It was raining, and I hit that area of construction where the wall barrier is on your right, and there's a barrier on the left, with no drainage. And I felt my car hydroplane. On brand new tires. The guy that pulled over said there must have been oil on the road.
The barrier was right there -- my front right bumper hit the barrier. The water caused me to make a 360 spin, which I turned into, knowing that's the best way to pull out of a spin (yea for driving skills), but of course there was no shoulder on the other side of the interstate either. Only a mud ditch and another barrier. The only extra room on the pavement was literally the distance of my foot from the line of the left lane to the end of the pavement. I was lucky no other cars were involved, because traffic was heavy on Sunday afternoon at 4:30. But I don't tailgate.
A guy pulled off the side of the road to make sure I was okay, and he ended up stuck in the ditch. An hour or so later, another guy did the same thing. I don't know why he pulled over, but he did. At the time of the accident, another woman on the interstate going the opposite direction had pulled over and jumped the barrier. She told me she thought I was dead, and I must have been wearing a seatbelt. I was, and only my back is sore from the spin. It's not overly comforting to hear, but there you go.
There was another wreck up the road -- three cars? Five? So the first policeman drove on after checking to make sure I was all right. The wrecker he called for us also kept driving -- he said he needed to be up there instead (a bitter voice in my head whispers that the commission was better up the road). A search and rescue guy came to the scene, and he said the road conditions weren't exactly legal -- the shoulder should have been larger, and gravel should have been placed on the road's edge, where Lance was huddled in misery. My sister made it to the scene to make sure I was okay (I couldn't get a hold of Justin until later), and then my parents, who were driving by on their way home from Benton, got there as well, and sent my siblings off on an errand.
Finally, two hours later, maybe a bit more, another wrecker arrived at the scene. After the first man had been pulled out of the ditch, a state trooper arrived (the other policeman had told me to tell the wrecker to pull me off at the Redmond Road exit and meet him there -- I never heard from him again). The state trooper gave me a citation -- Too Fast for Conditions. He said he didn't want to give me the ticket, but he had to because he was required to give something, and nothing else qualified. He said he had relatives who had done the same thing, and it didn't mean I was a bad driver, and he was sorry, and I could appeal it. Meanwhile, my crumpled car is being pulled up onto the wrecker, with the cheerful "Just Married" lettering I had intended to wash off that day looking down at me.
I honestly don't think I deserve the citation, so I will have to get permission to arrive late to my rotation in late August to make the court date. (I was in the right lane, going under the speed limit, in an accident-waiting-to-happen area of the interstate construction, with no shoulders and poor drainage, and a car can hydroplane at ten miles per hour -- should I have really been going ten miles per hour on an interstate? Nope, that's illegal. The speed limit was 55 mph, and I wasn't going that. I was driving with the traffic in the slow lane, obviously not tailgating, because if I had, another car on the high-traffic interstate would have been involved. What else could I have done?) Meanwhile, I will wait for the estimate from Gwatney with regards to repairs, hoping that the car isn't totaled, because I just can't afford a new (for me) car right now. It doesn't look bad enough to be totaled, so I'll hope for the best. I'll set aside the money for the deductible on my insurance, hope that my premium doesn't go up too badly, cringe as the prices of school books come in, and hope for the best. Because, really, that's all you can do.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about San Antonio. I'm sorry to burst any bubbles, but no edible items or whips from the bachelorette party were involved. With regards to the rest of the things I received -- well, I guess that's between me and Justin, and if the givers really want to know, then they can ask. Offline, of course. *grins and winks*
And Justin and I, before the CPR training, went to the humane society on Sunday and brought home a dashingly handsome kitten. We've named him Helo. I'll post pictures when I load my picture software for my digital camera (a wedding gift from my parents) onto my computer.
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| | Posted 7/3/2007 4:03 PM - 38 Views - 12 eProps - 7 comments
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