Close call

I've done a lot of driving in my day, 7 years doing some delivering and about 3 years working in car rentals. I haven't had an accident yet (knock on wood). That streak almost came to a brutal end last night.

We were on our way to Cambridge through some rainy weather and the closer we got, the worse the roads got. Near London the gusts of wind were moving us around pretty good and then we hit a big patch of ice that sent us into a wicked spin. Sue thinks we went around 2 1/2 times, I thought it might have only been 1 1/2. Who cares really. The point is that we were spinning out of control with traffic behind us closing in, including a tractor-trailer. Somehow we stayed in the lanes, off both shoulder, off the wall and out of the ditch. I have no doubt that my hands weren't the only ones trying to steer the car.

After the last spin we straightened out and I thought I had it fully corrected, but gave a little too much gas and we did another half spin. This sent us across the road and towards the ditch, but we were going slowly at this point and I was able to stop before going into the ditch.

It all happened so quickly that I really don't remember it all very clearly, but the one thing that I remember is that while were spinning, the tires barely squealed at all. Which tells me that we were on a pretty solid sheet of ice. I have to think that if we had been going sideways and hit a dry patch, this story would be completely different.

When we stopped, Darcy said, "Wow, what was that?!" We told her it was a big spin, she said, "I didn't like that. It scared me." Yeah, kiddo, it scared me too.

So we stopped at a hotel for the night and finished the last 30 minutes this morning. It was the right thing to do, as we saw several cars being pulled out of the ditch this morning.