All right class, what have we learned? That's right, we learned that if we really want to use this blog, we'll have to actually upload the things we write, instead of just posting them on Facebook.
Yeah, okay, I'll get better at this.
So here you go:
For two days it has been raining, and very cold, and foggy. I was driving down Lookout Mountain on Scenic Highway. It is called Scenic for a reason: it takes twice as long as Ochs Highway (which I use normally) and has excellent tourist traps along the way.
Now, even though I've driven Scenic probably a hundred times in my life, I haven't used it at all in the last several months. I assumed I could remember the curves - and for the most part, I did - even managing to send a text message in the first half of the drive. Of course, I was going 10 mph less than the speed limit, since the roads were soaked and my visibility was worthless.
And then my car went around a curve and I hit a straightaway where the road dropped suddenly in a sharp slope. And the guard rail was right in front of me, directly followed by a line of trees, some shrubbery and a 30 foot drop. And unlike Ochs Highway, Scenic doesn't have those nice little ridges in the midline that help with traction.
The conventional wisdom says that if you're about to hydroplane, you should never hit your brakes. However, I was not in a position to review my options. Moreover, if I had tried to turn without hitting my brakes, I would be, at best, in the hospital right now.
The tires on my nineteen ninety something Camry lost traction almost immediately. Half a second later, I remembered you weren't supposed to brake, but like hell I was gonna change my mind now. I just hoped my car would stop before I hit the rail. Then I hoped it would be slow enough not to dent my car. Then I hoped I'd make it out of this alive.
The car slid, then it slowed. It slid, and it slowed - again. Then it slid. Four seconds had passed since I hit the brakes. I was going to hit a thin, flimsy metal rail with a very sturdy, dense piece of metal at nearly 25 mph. Maybe I was a bit slower by then: I don't know. I wasn't looking at my speedometer.
I was in danger, and the curve went right, so I turned right. On the one hand, this was very stupid. The entire driver's side would have been crushed into me. On the other hand, the left-hand side of the car is closer: you can see the road beneath you; you have more control and finesse over your movements.
My Camry drifted, several feet (ten?) toward the guard rail & a few feet into the curve. My foot never left the brake pedal. The guard rail was five feet away from my heartbeat, so the front & back corners couldn't have been any more than three feet away from slamming into it. And then my car pulled out of the curve, its tires grabbing the concrete three times. Each time, I had traction for half a second (at most) and forced the steering wheel to the right. And then I was out, or nearly. I got a scare when the car kept skidding right and left - but the road was straight by that time (I had fifty feet or so before the next curve), so I wasn't nearly as worried about dying. If I hit the guard rail now, it would bump me, not kill me. Hey, that's chill - WHATTHEFUCKEVER - I would have been okay with that.
And even that didn't happen. My car figured out how to slow down gradually from 20ish mph to 7. And then I pulled to a halt and took the time to notice that I was hopped up on an insane amount of adrenaline. I've drifted on a curve before but never when I was about to die. But I always forget that I'm actually a very good driver in emergency situations.
A Christian would call this an act of God. But He and I are not on speaking terms. It's more likely that, as the saying goes, I have the Devil's own luck.
And lest I forget to mention this: I pray to Hermes, the god of travel and messengers, pretty regularly for more than two years. So Hermes? Thank you. It's really refreshing to be on speaking terms with a god who understands how to address real world problems with practical solutions - in this case, the fact that I escaped alive and with car intact. Mad props to the lord of the road.
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"Sometimes I like to pretend that Ke$ha is conducting a large-scale study on the behavior of adolescent girls to complete her doctorate in sociology. Just a thought."
~ Chris