h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I feel stupid now...

Let me explain. Last night, as the sun was going down, I was driving alone in my car down a gravelly, twisty mountain road. I've driven countless times on that road before, no problem. But last night I got a little weird, a little uncautious. "Hey," I thought. "Wouldn't it be fun just to coast down the hill for a while? And not hug the right side of the road on tight turns?"

Wheeeeeeeee!!

As I was zooming (far too fast) around a turn, I found myself in the left lane--facing a car. Well, from what I can reconstruct from my memories and from the tire tracks on the road, I swerved hard right to get back in my own lane. I was headed for the ditch, though, so to stay on the road I needed to turn slightly left. That I did, with a bit of overcorrection. Just a bit.

Two seconds later I was letting loose an unoriginal string of curses and staring out at a tree on the other side of my windshield. I was off the road on a steep embankment, a tree to my right the only thing between me and a few rollovers.

No one was hurt in the accident; the woman driving the other car managed to stop before narrowly missing my vehicle as it flew off the road. I got a ride down the hill and back home, and my family decided to deal with the matter in the morning, as it was already dark.

The towing was the hard part--they never come out as easily as they go in, or so says the tow truck driver. My front wheels were lodged in front of a stump on the ground, which made the extraction a bit difficult. It was wedged in there so tightly that Newton's Third Law of Motion took over and the cable started pulling the TRUCK towards the ditch. Though that was before the hook snapped off my car and nearly took out somebody's eye as it flew towards the operator.

But eventually we did get it out, and now it's sitting in my driveway at home while we think of what to do. The damage (at least to my severely untrained eye) seems to be not as bad as could be expected: the bumper, grille and right side are a bit smashed up, the rear axle is broken, and the stump on the ground took out an oil tube or something. ("Or something" to me covers just about anything in the car I can't see from the driver's seat.) It looks like I'll be able to keep on driving it with a few repairs--that is, if I'm ALLOWED to drive after this.

Though the important thing is that I'm unharmed, I suppose. I'll certainly be more cautious while driving now...certainly!

I'm glad you're okay!!
-Pete