wordsimageslife
an exploration of life as a parent & designer

Bad Friday, Really Bad

They say bad things happen in threes but for me, it was two's on Friday and it all involved our much maligned, lately, car. First, I was picking up Izzy from her friend Connor's house, so that I could take her to a Brownie outing, and I didn't see a metal pipe sticking out of the ground in front of the car as I started to park on the side of our friend's house.

Well, what I didn't see, I certainly heard as metal slowly crunched into metal. But the worst part was backing up. Still not knowing that it was a pipe, I started to back up and the pipe, firmly standing it's ground took the left side of my bumper with it. As I heard that happen, I stopped the car and took a look at the damage. There was my bumper, caught on the pipe and dangling from the left side of the car. I picked it up, and placed back into it's proper position, making sure it was stable, cursed a few times in my head, and proceeded with picking Isabella up and feeling just a little stupid. Little did I know the worse was to come.

Izzy and picked up dinner and headed home. We arrived home and I told Karen calmly and apologetically about the bumper. Changed clothes as Izzy finished her dinner and the two of us hopped back into the car for our night activity at Camp Ilchester. Ilchester is about fifteen minutes from our house via I-95. It had been raining, a heavy sprinkle, for about fifteen minutes as we were leaving the house. We got on 95 in about four minutes and encountered heavy traffic (it was around 6 pm, so not too late to be considered the tail end of rush hour). So, you have the picture now. Wet roads, heavy, stop and go traffic. Now, what do you think happened? Go ahead, take a Chevy Tahoe? First things first, no one got hurt. My back's a little sore but it's something that's occurred before so I can only say the accident brought it back up. As for our car, well, our car. Just take a look:

Not pretty. As said, we were in heavy traffic, bumper to bumper in some instances (and when you really go bumper to bumper don't pick a vehicle much bigger than yours). Stop and go, rolling along. I'm about one to one and a half car lengths behind the Taho when it stops short. I apply the Subaru's brakes and it just slides, I mean as if it was on ice skates, slides right into the back of the Taho. I immediately slam my hands on the steering wheel say 'Damn' and turn around to make sure Izzy is okay (in hindsight, I should have done these in reverse order). She's scared but not hurt. Her booster seat and seat belt kept her right where she was and even I didn't really move forward that much on impact.

I'm obviously a little shaken as I start moving the car over to the side of the road. Avoiding the idiots who decide there best action is to go around me on the right, the same direction I'm headed to get to the shoulder. Smoke is seeping out the front of the hood which is now a two-foot mound in front of the windshield. I'm just still in that 'oh shit' stage of an accident where you haven't really taken in all that has happened and are just getting back to the reality of insurance cards, copying down license plate numbers, etc.

I call Karen on the cell and tell her what happened. Izzy at this point is pretty upset and scared, and I'm trying to calm her down too. We, I, decide that going home is not a good idea since we were closer to camp. I'm a little concerned about driving the car but don't really want to leave it on 95. I'm fairly confident that the radiator is damaged but not sure how much. So, with the emergency blinker's on we head down 95 and toward our exit for the camp. We get about halfway there when the car overheats. Well, I can't stop now, so I crank the heat up the whole way and the car momentarily cools down. That lasts about a minute before the needle goes back up. I'm just praying me make the last mile and a half that we will make it. Finally, we get there and I spend the rest of the evening on the phone with the insurance company and making arrangements for a rental car.

The rest of the weekend was busy and I didn't have much time to think or recover from the anxiety of Friday. My back is bothering me so I took today off to recover and rest my back. Will have to wait and hear from the insurance company about how long and how much. Well, how much we know, since our deductible is pretty reasonable.

Well that was my Friday. The rest of the weekend will have to come later. I think I'm just happy that neither one of us was hurt and got to guess there were a few people up there looking out for both of us. Either that or we have the world's best seat belts.