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23 maart The Wreck, thank God for seatbelts! It has been quite a while since I added anything to the "Lada Report". This was partly due to cold weather preventing me from doing any further work and also to the fact that I had not been driving my car much. The Ski Hill has a Staff shuttle and I was the primary driver. So other than bombing around town and a few short trips the Lada had a lot of off time.
So I was finnally doing one of the things that I set out to do at the beginning of the season. I was going to audit a Level one Snowboard course and get my evaluator's cert. Then I could spend the real time on the snow I meant to this year. As with most of my best laid plans this one too was a little behind. Took the Precourse in December but never got a free weekend until March. I needed to attend 2 courses to see how other instructors ran the course and to get a chance to see a course in action. I took my level 1 about 12 years ago. A few things may have changed in that time.
Anyhow, this was why I was on the road. I was on the third day of a 3 day course and had to be there for 9am. Which was 8am Sask time. Which meant that I had to leave at 6:30am to get to Asessippi on time. No problem really.
It had been a warm weekend and Saturday night the wind had picked up and some snow was falling. So the warm hwy and the cold snow made for an instant bond. So the road was snow and ice covered and very white. I was driving south and the wind had been from the east the day before so there were many little finger drifts across the road. I underestimated these little drifts. I thought that they would not be as hard as they turned out to be. Most of them were in the other lane and so I was not really thinking about them much. So when I hit this one that was extending about 2 or 3 ft into my lane I was expecting a little bump and little else.
The drift caught my driver side front tire and spun me around backward. I countersteered a bit but quickly realized that I could not recover and braced for hitting the ditch backward. Ditching is no big deal, just get a tug and back on the road, right? That could have been the case except for how hard the wind had pounded the snow in the ditch. My rear passenger side tire was the first off of the road and onto the shoulder. When it hit the snow it was like hitting a wall. And I flipped.
It's amazing all of the thought time you have while spinning upside down in a car waiting for the inevitable, horrible landing. I was thinking of all of the people that die this way every year and how I was about to become one of them. I even remember thinking, "I really don't want to die like this." Really calmly too. Hmm so how would I like to die? Subject for another day maybe.
The car did a 1 and a quarter barrel roll on kind of an off kilter axis and landed on the passenger side, nose first. It was quite the ride. If I hadn't been in mortal danger it might have been fun. So everything comes to a halt and I do a quick check. I'm ok. I'm hanging in my seat with my car on it's side. I had covered my face expecting flying glass and crunching of metal. None of that really happened. I didn't even crack a window.
So I did what most people with a system overrun with adrenaline do. I was not thinking much. I reached over and hit the seatbelt release. And fell into the passenger side. I had a chuckle at that. Then I reached up and turned the key off. I don't know if the engine was still running or not but I was thinking enough to realize that needed doing. The lada was on the passenger side and happily emptying it's gass tank into the snow. Crap. That was just filled.
So I stood up and began to try to get out. It was at this late point that I sustained my only significant injury. I popped the driver's door open and pushed the door up. And it came right back down on my head. Ouch. Good thing I wasn't injured. The door would have finnished me off.
I climbed out and stood on top of my car. I had just passed a farm and so I knew what my next step was. To get help. I jumped off of the car expecting to sink up to my waist in snow and landed on what felt like concrete. Wow. The car was where the middle of the ditch should be and sitting on four feet of snow. The ditch was full and even with the road. If I could have tipped my car back up I could have driven out. It hardly made a dent. No joke.
There were a few dents in the Lada though. I walked around it and surveyed the damage. Not bad considering.
So the nearest farm yeilded friendly results and Mr. Don Walsh got up out of bed an made me coffee before giving me a lift back to town. My thanks to him also.
So what have we learned? Ladas can survive a crash quite well. Seatbelts work. A properly adjusted seat can really help in a crash. Doors can be heavy. Snow is not always soft. Really it's been educational. (2) reactiesMeld je aan bij Windows Live ID om een reactie toe te voegen (als je Hotmail, Messenger of Xbox LIVE gebruikt, heb je al een Windows Live ID). Aanmelden Heb je geen Windows Live ID? Maak er nu een aan
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