I wish I knew of a Good Title

Well something very big has just happened recently in my life, but I'm not really sure how to go about recording or telling about it. Simply put, Sunday morning on the way to church I was involved in an accident and ended up totalling my car. To clarify the word accident, nobody else was involved. It was simply me, my car, and the guard-rail separating traffic.

I wish that I could spin an exciting tale out of what happened, but the root cause prevents me from embellishing or expanding too much. Let me just start at the beginning and tell it as I remember.

Sunday morning started out, normally enough. Getting ready for church while watching tv. Unfortunately whenever the tv is turned on I often get sucked in and give it far too much time and attention. That morning was no exception. I was suppposed to meet my brother and we were going to carpool to church together. However, because of the tv I was running late and in a hurry. It was lightly snowing, and there was maybe a half inch of snow on the roads. (Can you see where this is going?) Feeling confident in my driving skills, off I started-ever aware of being behind schedule. As I entered on to the highway, I felt that I had things in control and started going faster to make up some of the lost time. Pretty soon I was going a few miles above the speed limit, normally no big deal, but when driving on snow very, very stupid. All was going well until I started going around a slight curve. As my front end started turning my back end just went straight on, starting a dangerous sliding spin. I knew enough to try and correct, but instead of helping it only made things worse.

(At this point I really can't remember how or in what order things happened, but I think things went roughly like the following.) I'm pretty sure that I overcorrected as well as hit the brakes to hard which stopped the spin one way but instantly threw me into one going the opposite direction. At some point I would have been perpendicular to the lanes of traffic and then I finished a 180 and crunched the passenger side my car up against the barrier separating the directional traffic. This spun me back around so I was facng the right direction where I coasted off to the side of the road, mostly out of the way of traffic. Needless to say I was badly shaken up but thank the Lord not hurt at all. Once I had enough of my wits together, I turned off the car, got out, called my brother to let him know what had just happened and then called AAA. After making the calls I looked at the car to see just how bad it was. The front passenger corner was demolished, with some apparent engine damage (I could tell this because the hood was jammed shut and anti-freeze was leaking out at a steady flow). Also the rear passenger corner was pretty much gone. The back passenger door was jammed shut, and the trunk gate was visibly out of alignment. Here are a couple of pictures taken with my camera phone a day or two later. You can get a pretty good idea of the damage though as usual, the real thing is much more impressive.








I just have to thank God for family in the area, both blood and church. I also have to thank Him for watching over me even when I definitely didn't deserve it. The day after when I stopped at the auto body shop they told that the car was definitely not worth even trying to repair. When I found a junk yard to take it away, I was surprised how much it made me sad. Even though it was just a piece of machinery I had become attached to it, and to see it just hauled away all smashed up knowing that I would never be able to drive it again filled my heart with a heaviness that I wasn't expecting. And now I am driving my brother's car (being much more careful) while I wait for something new to come along.

If there is a moral to this story I think it would probably be: Slow down when driving in snow and don't be stupid. And AAA is a really good thing to have.