Monday, April 30, 2007

Headed back to Indiana - Almost in an accident

Coming back from Alabama we had a real close call on 65 north. I was in the left lane with a safe distance between me and the next car. A pickup with a pickup camper towing a boat moved over in front of me in the left lane. A few seconds later we came upon an accident in the southbound lanes. It was across the median. About five cars ahead in my lane, someone decided to slow down to look at the accident. It started a chain reaction and the next thing I knew; there was tire smoke in front of me. I have antilock brakes and so I depressed the brake pedal as hard as I could. There was no way I was going to be able to stop in time to not hit the pickup pulling the boat. The right lane was not an option. Just then the guy in the pickup decided he wasn’t going to get stopped so he went to the median on the left. This gave me more stopping room, but I still wasn’t going to get stopped in time to not collide with the car ahead of me. I felt like a NASCAR driver who came through the smoke and saw the cars parting in front of him. Since the pickup went way left instead of just on the edge of the road, it opened up the apron for me. I kept the right side wheels on the asphalt apron and my left wheels were in grass in the median. I went left of the car ahead of me, missed him by a few feet and ended up beside him. We never did completely stop. We were very fortunate that no one collided. We pulled off at the next exit and so did the guy in the pickup. I thanked him for clearing the way for me and he said he felt very fortunate that no one was hurt. We were just blessed that we were all safe. The alarm install went well. We got done Saturday at 2 PM and left for home Sunday AM. We are at Taylor University tonight and took Hannah and Silas out for a meal. We plan to be back at the fairgrounds Tues mid-day.

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