Adventures while driving...

Was a heck of a ride home from Mattbear's (and Jenbear's) awesome Christmas Party. Was a clear dry night when we left. After about an hour on the road my mom calls:

Her: "How is the weather there?"
Me: "uh, fine. Why?"
Her: "There's been snow & Freezing rain in Portland all day. The roads are all icy, and traffic is backed up because of accidents everywhere."

Great.

So we get a ways south of Centrailia, and there starts being slush & ice on the road. There's a truck a ways ahead of me, and someone ahead of him. Suddenly the truck spins over to the right, then spins back to the left. I get busy trying to stop, and look up just in time to see him in the ditch rolling over as I pass. I stopped on the side of the road, waking Cynthia up with a "Call 911!", jump out of the car, and run over through the snow.

I was fully expecting to see someone in that car seriously injured or dead. The truck had finish ed up upright, and just as I ran up, the driver's door opened, and someone surprised me by stepping out. Asian guy, looked about my age. "Are you all right?!" "I'm alright", he said, looking around as if to make sure. The dome light was on, and there was a passenger, and two women in the back. I kept looking around for blood or injury, but eventually all of them got out of the car and seemed fine, although the women seemed in a bit of shock. One immediately got on her cell phone. None of them spoke very good english. The back of the truck was sitting on top of that steel-cable fence that runs down the middle of the divider ditch, and the rear window was broken, but that seemed to be the worst of it. Amazing, since they were probably doing 60 when they went off the road.

At some point the guy who had been in the car ahead of them came up, and one of the guys told him there was a Consul car coming to get them, so they must have been foreign diplomats or something, although they were driving an older model Isuzu Trooper. Since everyone seemed okay, the other guy was there, and 911 had been called, there wasn't much for me to do, so I left. Had to sit behind the wheel for about five minutes before I trusted myself to drive off though.. too much adrenalin.

Finally hit Portland about midnight, and all the freeways were big sheets of ice. Traffic was backed up for an accident right as we were crossing the I-405 bridge, so we got to sit on the bridge for an hour while they cleared that and sanded the road.

So anyway, I feel lucky that we made it home alright, and nobody skidded into our shiny new car. :)

Take care driving this holiday season... nothing like a car accident to muck up your Christmas.