The Crash Story

It was Christmas Eve Eve and I was determined to get myself up to Montreal for the holidays. It was one of the worst blizzards of the year and even getting to work that morning was a trial. The snow was thick and very wet, the roads were unplowed, as Massachusetts was not prepared for this storm AT ALL. The day passed slowly, people got more and more worried and the ranks of the workers thinned out more and more. I went out to help dig the parking lot out and the snow was up over my knees, sloshing into my boots. My boss, Chris and I dug out about 5 cars before we got to my little powerhouse Audi. I took a moment to talk to Suzanne and she was reluctant, but she knew she could power her way out. She has all-wheel drive and I was depending on it to get me out of this parking lot and on my way to Montreal. it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon and I had to make it up to Canada by 10 that night to make the rendezvous with my friends. I had faith, I was a fool. I started up my car and let her warm up a bit. I took a moment to pray to the Snow God and slip it into Reverse. I gunned it and my car leapt out backwards into the snow, ripping through the piles of white stuff and out of the parking lot. The roads were PLUGGED, cars of every description were spinning, slipping and sliding in the snow and it took me about 30 minutes just to get a mile onto the highway. Breathing a sigh of relief, I thought it would be clear sailing from here on in. I was wrong.

After about an hour or listening to Tool while speeding down Rt 3., I saw a bit of traffic ahead. I stopped and drove a little way over the crest of a hill, to look upon about 10 miles of traffic with cars off the road left and right. I crawled along, stopping and revving every few feet. The road was slanted off to my left and with the inch-thick layer or ice on the road, I had to keep crawling uphill to my right as well as keep moving forward. We finally came to the problem, 3 tractor-trailer trucks has jackknifed across the road and the only way around them was via a path that someone had carved to the other highway, bordering us on the right. Gunning it across the field of grass, I pulled up over the lip of the road on the other side. I was presented with an option, take the offramp with everyone else and just go home, or take this new highway, this new UNPLOWED highway, alone.

The highway it was.

The road surface was nonexistent, it was buried under 2 inches of snow and I followed the tracks that some brave soul had made, hours before me. I traveled along, humming nervously to myself, I was very lonely without out here, where the snow muffled all sound and the roar of my engine was like a whispered intrusion. I made shit time, it had taken me 4 hours just to get out of Boston! It usually only took me 5 hours to get to Montreal. Pushing on as it slowly got darker and darker, until it was just me and my car, following twin beams into a swirling white mist.
 
 

When you're alone as I was, 3 hours turned into 4 and 4 into 5 before I even noticed that any time had passed. My mind started to play tricks on me, making me hear things that weren't actually there and soon I found myself laughing hysterically to my own, foolish, unspoken jokes. Even with Tool, Korn and Nine Inch Nails screaming their hearts out at me, I couldn't keep from spacing out a bit.

It was somewhere around Concord where a bad thing happened. I was driving along at about 40 mph (65 kph), the fastest I dared on this stretch of road, when I saw headlights approaching in my rearview mirror. Happy to have a new "road-buddy", I kept on doing my leisurely 40 up Interstate 93-North, 5 hours into a hellish journey. The headlights got WAY too close before backing off and hanging back for a moment. I heard his engine race and the roar was heard above the softening negative din of the storm, making me look up into the rearview mirror. His car had pulled dangerously close and he was trying to pass me when there was only one lane free from snow.

"What a fool, I'd better let him pass", I thought to myself as I glanced back into the mirror, those amber fog lights mounted on the front of his grill giving off a hellish glow.

I couldn't have this behind me the entire time so I put on my blinker and SLOWLY began pulling over to the right, so he could pass me on the left. I guess I wasn't going fast enough for his liking, as he roared his engine and pulled around on my RIGHT, cutting me off. My car wouldn't stop sliding and I would have hit him if he hadn't begun to spin out himself. His car did a 720 and his bumper cut a swath so close to mine that he smacked the edge off of my license plate.

My car spun like a top gone crazy as I tried fighting the wheel for control. I let go of the locked wheel and just trusted my luck not to die. I just let the car do what it was going to, releasing any control I had. Suzanne jammed to the left, caught the wheel on the edge of the highway and I went up and off the road. There was a moment of perfect clarity as I felt my car lift off the ground and spin insanely forward. It all happened so fast, then it just slowed down to a crawl, was I going to die, was I going to live, WAS Miller Lite less filling or did it just taste great? Those questions spun through my head as I hit the snow bank.

In the collision, I smacked my head off the side window and nearly broke my elbow as I tried protecting my skull from cracking. I have no doubt that without my seat belt on, I'd be dead right now. I would have died in that car and that's pretty damn spooky.

I woke up a few seconds/minutes (?) later to the most ferocious headache I've ever had in my life and I took stock of my situation. My car was off the road, that was certain. I was alone, off the side of the road, in the middle of the night, with no food and I was 20 miles away from the nearest exit.

It was like being in a very cold, pretty-roomy, semi-smelly coffin. Shutting down all the running electrical switches and dekeying the engine, I tried opening the door. No chance of pushing that open against a few tons of snow, so I reviewed my other options. Turning the key in the ignition, I heard it cough with backed-up exhaust. I put it into 1 ^st and tried slowly rocking my way out, the tires locked up, but not even the Mighty Audi could break the frozen hold that the snow had on her. I tried the window. Nothing. The snow was already frozen to the glass surface. An idea popped into my head, and I winced at the thought of actually having to follow through with it. I'd have to squeeze out the sunroof. Fitting my big, round ass out that small, square hole? Now that'd be a picture. And what if I got stuck? I'd be a large flannel Popsicle sticking straight out of a snow bank when they found me sometime in the early spring. I opened up the sunroof and shut off the car. No piles of snow fell in on me thankfully and I squeezed out as quickly as possible. I was pleased, no butter was needed to grease the passage.

My car was absolutely covered in snow and would never be seen from the road, so I began to brush it off, trying to expose as much of the red as I could. Walking up and down the road to keep my feet warm, I kept a lookout for approaching vehicles. It was 20 minutes before I saw headlights worming their way down towards me.. It was a pickup truck, WITH a snowplow! What a charmed life I lead.

He plowed a place for him to park and I ran over to the passenger side, yanking the door open to hop inside. An older, grandfatherly-type sat behind the wheel, flannel shirt proudly in place. He seemed nice, but more importantly, he had a cell phone. I got on the horn and called AAA, and they sent out a wrecker immediately, but in this weather, it'd be an hour or two at the minimum before he could get out to me. Just a few minutes later, a State Trooper pulled over to the side of the road and told me he'd wait with me. He had a Polaroid, and THAT, my friends, is where the picture came from.
 
Note:
This story is part of a long 80-page saga, available in a private area of the web site. That story is contained within a much larger book that I have been writing over the past few years.
Ask me, and I'll give you the address of the private area. There's no charge or anything.

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Page last updated: April 25, 2003