Tuesday, February 17, 2009

the other emergency, and other updates.

On Friday night, Carl and I decided we were going to spend the weekend in Las Vegas. We planned everything, went to sleep, and got up the next morning at 6 to be on the road by 6:30.

Little did we know it was blizzarding.

Things were fine until we were about 100 miles south, right off of Scipio--I drove over some snowy road and lost control. We spun around about three times, and then careened backwards over the side of the road, about 100 feet. We stopped about 20 feet short of a ravine.

At first the car wouldn't start, but God answered our prayers and soon the engine started running again. We decided we'd try to push the car up, which was ridiculous because not only was the slope something like 15 degrees, we were very far down, and it was still snowing madly, and we'd driven over about seven bushes. I suppose we drove over them too fast for them to compress for real.

So we climbed up the snowy embankment and stood by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Carl called the cops; I guess a couple other people had seen us fly backwards down the hill, and the troopers were already on the way. Soon enough, a giant Walmart truck had stopped about a quarter mile past us; we watched as it backed up to be right across the street from us. The trucker rolled down his window and invited us to come sit in his truck.

So we did. His name was Al. Al the Walmart trucker. He wondered if we were going down to Las Vegas to get married on Valentine's day. We explained that we were already married. :o)

We talked for a while; soon the trooper guys showed up, and went to go inspect our car. They called a tow truck.

Riding up a crazily steep slope being pulled up by a tow truck is one of the most frightening things ever. Aside from actually falling down the slope and thinking you're going to die the whole time.

The tow was $200, and miraculously the car was 100% okay, even though it's a '94 Corsice that's been rebuilt twice (that sucker is old and has been through a ton!). So we finished driving to Vegas.

Once again, we miraculously survived. What is up with this week??

2 comments:

Heather said...

Please stop almost dying? Okay?

Vanessa Swenson said...

We've decided at the office that it's the extended curse of Friday the 13th.
And I'm with Heather: no more of the almost dying stuff. It's makes for great blog entries, though.