STUPID DRIVER

That would be myself. Stupid Driver. I put my car in the ditch on the way home from work today. It had been raining in London and a bit of snow on the drive home. Then the snow cleared and the roads "looked" dry. I was booting along, talking on my mobile with the wife, going about 80km in a 90km/h stretch. I came into a corner, just past a bridge and instantly knew I was in trouble. I hit a patch of black ice, back end of the car started skidding out, I took my foot off the gas, started pumping the brakes, and turned into the skid. Hit another patch of black ice and knew at that instant I was going into the ditch, only question was how bad it was going to be.

Did I mention I was yelling "NO, NO, SHIT SHIT SHIT" at the top of my lungs? And I was still on the phone with my wife.

Car skidded 180 and I ended up in the opposite ditch, facing the direction I had come, and stuck good. No way I was driving out, frankly I was lucky I had not flipped the car.

First thing I did was pick up my mobile and tell the wife I was fine. Once I pulled myself out of the car (which was very difficult considering it was sitting at a 60 degree angle) and made it up to the side of the road I called a tow truck and hunkered down for the wait.

Not the wait for the tow truck. The wait for all the folks who were going to stop and ask if I needed help. Its simply what happens when you end up in the ditch around here. Small town Ontario. Literally every single car that drove past stopped to see if I was OK. The only ones who didn't were the ones who passed while someone else was already stopped.

At one point a car went screaming past, then slammed on the brakes, swerved, and nearly ended up in the ditch beside me. A guy jumped out and came running towards me. "I'm a student Paramedic, is anybody injured?" He was salivating like a dog at the thought of giving someone an emergency tracheotomy with his ballpoint pen. He nearly caused another accident when he drove off moments later, clearly disappointed that I had not so much as spilled my Diet Pepsi.

So I am now home safe, the car is at my father-in-law's garage for an inspection before I take it out on the road again, and I am writing my first post in about two weeks. What can I say, I get into the routine of the day job and neglect the blog, which is stupid since writing in this dumb thing is one of the things I truly enjoy.