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Short and exciting...
Nov. 23rd, 2008 07:14 pmAt the end of last week, Wil unexpectedly learned that he would have the entire weekend off. Which considering it's the weekend before Thanksgiving and Wil works at Sears... well, you get the picture. We decided, on the spur of the moment, to head down to Madison and spend a great weekend relaxing.
However the trip was both much shorted and much more exciting than planned. Also to add: not very much relaxing happened.
Wil worked until 9:30 on Friday, so Myr and I drove down to pick him up and head out. Myr, who just got her driver's learning permit two weeks ago, drove all the way down and through Wausau to pick him up. Then she was going to drive for the next couple of hours until we made it to Portage.
So, you ask, when did it get exciting??
Shortly outside of Stevens Point we were passed. That car edged slightly into our lane just as Myr edged slightly into theirs. Myr corrected, then corrected again, but the car was sluggish and then went into a spin. we ended up backwards in the ditch. We didn't flip and the car was still running fine when we stopped. It turns out, however that a lengthy skid on pavement and into the frozen ditch is very hard on tires. The rear tire was off the rim and the front one was chewed up pretty badly. Yeah. There were a whole lot of things that could make spinning off the road at 60 mph a whole lot less happy.
By the time we got out and decided that we were all fine and took inventory of the car and tired, the gal who was passing us when we spun out circled back to see how we were (very nice of her). She had already called 911 (even nicer of her) and she said she would wait until help came (can't get much nicer than that). A sheriff's deputy should up about a minute later. She called a tow and she checked everything out and made sure we were fine.
All told we were towed out of the ditch and in the tow garage in under an hour. We had been hoping to be able to change the rear tire and drive home, but the front tire had also decided to go flat, so we opted to have it towed to a near by garage. They could fix the tires and put it on the lift to make sure there wasn't anything else wrong with it.
Turns out that the ball joints were bad. They could have sustained some damage in the spin out, but most likely they were going bad before. Since the ball joints, I'm told, deal with the steering, they could have contributed to the wipe out. I have noticed that the steering seemed a little spongy lately, but was putting off getting it looked at. Yeah, I know, dumb move.
Anyhow, the only damage from the wipe out was two tires. Since that was way under the $1000 needed to report an accident. So YAY. Of course, that means no serious looking into what caused the accident. We will never know exactly what happened. But since no one was hurt and we still have a car, it really doesn't matter.
Myr is much better today than she was yesterday. She did drive us to the movie theatre on Thursday, so that horse has been rode. She is also dealing with what might have happened very well, although she did say to me "You are being awfully nice to me considering I almost killed you and Dad." I told her that that type of thing is true, but that it didn't bear thinking too much about.
In any case, life isn't bad, despite the cost of repairs. (OK, I really want to whine about the cost of the repairs and the fact that I really can't afford them. But I will just leave it at that.) The biggest drawback to all of this was that we didn't get to visit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
finabair. *pout*
However the trip was both much shorted and much more exciting than planned. Also to add: not very much relaxing happened.
Wil worked until 9:30 on Friday, so Myr and I drove down to pick him up and head out. Myr, who just got her driver's learning permit two weeks ago, drove all the way down and through Wausau to pick him up. Then she was going to drive for the next couple of hours until we made it to Portage.
So, you ask, when did it get exciting??
Shortly outside of Stevens Point we were passed. That car edged slightly into our lane just as Myr edged slightly into theirs. Myr corrected, then corrected again, but the car was sluggish and then went into a spin. we ended up backwards in the ditch. We didn't flip and the car was still running fine when we stopped. It turns out, however that a lengthy skid on pavement and into the frozen ditch is very hard on tires. The rear tire was off the rim and the front one was chewed up pretty badly. Yeah. There were a whole lot of things that could make spinning off the road at 60 mph a whole lot less happy.
By the time we got out and decided that we were all fine and took inventory of the car and tired, the gal who was passing us when we spun out circled back to see how we were (very nice of her). She had already called 911 (even nicer of her) and she said she would wait until help came (can't get much nicer than that). A sheriff's deputy should up about a minute later. She called a tow and she checked everything out and made sure we were fine.
All told we were towed out of the ditch and in the tow garage in under an hour. We had been hoping to be able to change the rear tire and drive home, but the front tire had also decided to go flat, so we opted to have it towed to a near by garage. They could fix the tires and put it on the lift to make sure there wasn't anything else wrong with it.
Turns out that the ball joints were bad. They could have sustained some damage in the spin out, but most likely they were going bad before. Since the ball joints, I'm told, deal with the steering, they could have contributed to the wipe out. I have noticed that the steering seemed a little spongy lately, but was putting off getting it looked at. Yeah, I know, dumb move.
Anyhow, the only damage from the wipe out was two tires. Since that was way under the $1000 needed to report an accident. So YAY. Of course, that means no serious looking into what caused the accident. We will never know exactly what happened. But since no one was hurt and we still have a car, it really doesn't matter.
Myr is much better today than she was yesterday. She did drive us to the movie theatre on Thursday, so that horse has been rode. She is also dealing with what might have happened very well, although she did say to me "You are being awfully nice to me considering I almost killed you and Dad." I told her that that type of thing is true, but that it didn't bear thinking too much about.
In any case, life isn't bad, despite the cost of repairs. (OK, I really want to whine about the cost of the repairs and the fact that I really can't afford them. But I will just leave it at that.) The biggest drawback to all of this was that we didn't get to visit
finabair. *pout*
