Monday, December 01, 2008

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate my neighbors, but I hate people who talk on their cell phone when they should be paying attention to the road even more.

Anonymous said...

Isnt it illegal in Canada? Almost everything is illegal in the UK.