Accidents and Angels

Where does the time go?!? I know, it goes to working, knitting,  housework, eating, yardwork, and a thousand other activities that fill the days… It’s interesting that I should think to put knitting second! I guess I’ve been doing a lot of that lately!

Coming home from Thanksgiving (yes, I’ve been meaning to blog since then), we had a little extra excitement. As we drove home, the road conditions were generally good, although we went through several show showers. I took the car off cruise control when I noticed the colour of the road change, suspecting it was icy. Sure enough, with traffic all around me, I started to skid. I tried to get it back under control, but with front-wheel drive, I got into a nasty oscillating skid, left, then right, left, and right. When I realized I was really going to lose it, I started braking, hoping to lose some speed before hitting the ditch. And hit the ditch we did, just missing a sign, skidding, bouncing, sideways down the slope, until we ended up facing the wrong way — but still right side up! — in about 6 inches of wet, loose snow. As we were skidding, it was wild the thoughts that ripped through my mind: “Oh, damn, a sign! Gotta miss the sign, gotta miss the sign! Oh, good, we’re gonna miss it. Oh, man, we’re going fast… don’t want to flip… nope, we’re not going to flip. Oh, whew! Wow, breathe… Oh, man, we’re going to have to call a tow truck…”

Eddie (our cat) was still laying on my lap, apparently unaware that this particular motion was not normal. What a guy!

We sat in the ditch, catching our breath and being thankful things were not worse. And then it got better: we saw a pick-up in the ditch behind us (but we were facing him, because we’d turned 180 degrees). The driver got out, locked his hubs and then drove out of the ditch. He came over to us, asked if we were okay, and offered to pull us out! He was a young guy, 25 yrs old or less, and said that he’d seen us losing control and had taken the ditch rather than hit us. That was awesome — and his helping us out was even better! So we got the rope out of the truck (it had been there for 3 years, never used), hooked it up to his truck and through 3 separate attempts, rigging the rope 2 different ways, with Darren pushing and me backing up, we made it out of the ditch. We were pretty scared that we might get hit on the side of the road while we worked, with the icy conditions and people driving waaaaay too fast. Most moved over to the far lane, though (we were on the divided highway about 20 km south of Valleyview).

We were so relieved. Our angel with the old, red pick-up just gave his name as “Dre.” Thanks, Dre, we appreciated your help that day!

I am surprised how many people read the “Emotional Jellyfish” post, yet didn’t leave any comments… I guess my readership is mostly strong, silent types. Enjoy the day!