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| BrendanMcKillip.com brendan mckillip's daily journal |
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daily journal
A Lousy Way To Start a Monday As I headed out the door Monday morning, I knew that the weather had turned frigid after nearly 48 hours of warm air and rain. What I didn�t know was how that rapid change in the weather had adversely affected the road conditions. After a few wiggly turns as I weaved my way out of our subdivision, I could tell that the sudden drop in air temperature and had resulted in a slick, nearly invisible, coating of frost on the roads. Once I left our subdivision I learned that the slippery conditions weren�t limited to the lightly traveled side roads, the main roads were just as icy. Didn�t know where the salt crews were in Aurora, but they weren�t anywhere near my house.  I made some adjustments for the driving conditions and slowly made my way to the train station. Being that it was the Monday between Christmas and New Year�s Day, the roads were pretty deserted. I didn�t see much risk in navigating the icy roads. Still, I drove cautiously, slowing down well in advance of intersections and being extra careful in turns of the road.So what happened next totally surprised me. The road I was driving on goes into a lazy little S-curve. Nothing too dramatic, but curvy none the less. It�s a four lane road running north and south, I was headed north in the far right lane. My lane position choice was a conscious precautionary move � I didn�t want to be in the left lane and start sliding in one of the bends in the S-curve only to find myself in oncoming traffic. The posted speed limit is 35 m.p.h. and I was going around 25. Because of all these precautions, I didn�t panic too much when the back end of my car swung out from behind me on the driver�s side when I hit the first bend in the S-curve. There weren�t any cars around me and I had the entire two north-bound lanes to get my car back under control. I slammed the steering wheel to the left � in the direction of the skid - and took my foot off the gas. The maneuver I�ve always used with great success to bring a swerving car back under control. Maybe I didn�t execute the maneuver correctly or maybe the S-curve got in the way, because instead of straightening out and staying on the road I ended up sliding up over the curb, across the sidewalk, and into the grass on the other side of the walk.  I still remember the commentary screaming through my head as the car was jumping over the curb and I could see the trees and bushes rushing towards me through the windshield, �Don�t hit a tree! Don�t hit a tree! Sweet Jesus, just don�t hit a tree!�Actually, maybe that�s what the commentary I was screaming out loud. Luckily, I did not hit a tree (or a bush or anything else for that matter). The car came to a quite little stop and I took a deep breath. It was then that I realized hitting a tree wasn�t what I should have been worried about while my car was sliding out of control. It falling into the retention pond I was sliding towards. The car had come to a stop not more than five feet away from a 3-4 foot drop into a large retention pond that sits near the road. A little more skidding and I would have been taking an early morning bath in some very cold water. The car had come to rest just at the apex of the little berm that divides the pond from the side walk. Climbing out of a partially submerged (hell, could have been fully submerged � I don�t know how deep the pond is) Neon was not what I had in mind when I left my house that morning. Thinking that I came five feet from having to learn how to escape a car that�s landed in the water sort of got the adrenaline going, but the relief in knowing that I didn�t have to take that lesson helped calm things down. Amazingly, there were no other vehicles around � at least none that had stuck around to see how the idiot in the Neon sliding across the parkway had ended up. So I put the car into reverse, slowly moved back onto the road, and pulled up about fifteen feet to another side street and parked. A quick inspection of the car didn�t reveal any problems. Everything looked good. So I got back in and went about my way � driving even slower than before. Considering what had just happened, I figured that my brush with a watery death was the sign of a shit-storm of a Monday and I dreaded the rest of my trip into work that morning. Thankfully, my concerns were ungrounded. Sliding off the road and almost ending up in a pond proved to be the only crappy thing to happen that day. Then again, with that sort of start to the morning, I think I set my crappy-Monday bar sort of high � insuring a smooth rest of the day. If that was the case, I�d rather just deal with Mondays as the come. No need to condense all the frustration and anxiety into 15-seconds of white-knuckled excitement. All take things spread out across the day. Labels: General posted by Brendan | 10:50 PM | permanent link |
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