AwkwardMD
The worst Buddhist
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2014
- Posts
- 3,438
I lived in Texas for a while, but I grew up in Pennsylvania. One winter, a friend and I were driving back home for Christmas. We had left the night before, after I got off work, because we were trying to outrun a huge stormfront. My friend drove first, through the night, while I caught a little bit of sleep, and then I took over around 4 in the morning.
Tennessee was where the storm overtook us. My car at the time had tires that had only barely passed inspection the year before, and were verging on bald. As we drove, now well behind the storm front, we started seeing cars off on the side of the road all facing the wrong direction, having spun off. It was wet, but the ground was ice cold, which made it ripe for black ice.
We crested a hill, and it was a long half mile down the other side. We lost control about halfway down, and were sideways by the time we reached the bottom of the hill where the highway took a turn. Fortunately for us, the Tennessee sections of the US Interstate System often have wide and gulfed green spaces, like a gentle half pipe, in between the east and west bound sides. Our back tires hit the grass first, which spun us around the other way, and we ramped up the hill coming pretty close to the westbound traffic before slumping back down.
When we finally stopped, we got out of my car and walked around, checking that we were okay and that my car was okay. No flat tires. Some grass jammed up underneath us, but all in all okay. My car wouldn’t start, but we figured we’d let it sit for a while and see if it wanted to start after some time cooling down.
We had been sitting in the car, killing time and counting our good fortune when, as I looked past my friend, I saw a Honda CRV bearing down on us going much faster than we had, equally out of control. I shouted to grab hold of something, byt just before it plowed into us, where it surely would have knocked us into the westbound lane behind us, the CRV hit some kind of dip in the grass and launched up into the air and over us. It still hit us but somehow only did damage to the hood, which it wrapped around the motor underneath, but the quarter panels and windshield were untouched.
We were very, very lucky to escape with our lives. I made a joke to the state trooper who came out later, saying that although the CRV’s form had been kind of ugly, they’d stuck the landing.
Three weeks later, my friend and I were back in Texas, and I was telling them this story at two in the morning at a Denny’s.
I said, “Almost as soon as we started down this hill, we lost control, and we started spinning,” and was twirling my finger around and around, like a top.
My friend frowned and said, “We only got, like, halfway turned around before we hit the grass.”
Completely straight face. “That’s no good for the story,” I told them. Then I turned back to the rest of our friends, who had been listening to that, started twirling my finger again, and said, “So, we’re spinning, right?”
Tennessee was where the storm overtook us. My car at the time had tires that had only barely passed inspection the year before, and were verging on bald. As we drove, now well behind the storm front, we started seeing cars off on the side of the road all facing the wrong direction, having spun off. It was wet, but the ground was ice cold, which made it ripe for black ice.
We crested a hill, and it was a long half mile down the other side. We lost control about halfway down, and were sideways by the time we reached the bottom of the hill where the highway took a turn. Fortunately for us, the Tennessee sections of the US Interstate System often have wide and gulfed green spaces, like a gentle half pipe, in between the east and west bound sides. Our back tires hit the grass first, which spun us around the other way, and we ramped up the hill coming pretty close to the westbound traffic before slumping back down.
When we finally stopped, we got out of my car and walked around, checking that we were okay and that my car was okay. No flat tires. Some grass jammed up underneath us, but all in all okay. My car wouldn’t start, but we figured we’d let it sit for a while and see if it wanted to start after some time cooling down.
We had been sitting in the car, killing time and counting our good fortune when, as I looked past my friend, I saw a Honda CRV bearing down on us going much faster than we had, equally out of control. I shouted to grab hold of something, byt just before it plowed into us, where it surely would have knocked us into the westbound lane behind us, the CRV hit some kind of dip in the grass and launched up into the air and over us. It still hit us but somehow only did damage to the hood, which it wrapped around the motor underneath, but the quarter panels and windshield were untouched.
We were very, very lucky to escape with our lives. I made a joke to the state trooper who came out later, saying that although the CRV’s form had been kind of ugly, they’d stuck the landing.
Three weeks later, my friend and I were back in Texas, and I was telling them this story at two in the morning at a Denny’s.
I said, “Almost as soon as we started down this hill, we lost control, and we started spinning,” and was twirling my finger around and around, like a top.
My friend frowned and said, “We only got, like, halfway turned around before we hit the grass.”
Completely straight face. “That’s no good for the story,” I told them. Then I turned back to the rest of our friends, who had been listening to that, started twirling my finger again, and said, “So, we’re spinning, right?”
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