My drive home was quite a drive. It basically started the night before I left school, I had planned on going to bed around 10pm, but obviously that didn’t happen. I believe it was around 2am before I even had the chance to get in bed. I got less than 6 hours of sleep and awoke the next morning to it raing. I had seen the weather report that had shown that it was supposed to rain the entire way up to Clarksburg, WV. As it got colder the rain was supposed to turn to freezing rain and then snow.
Here is a picture of the national radar for my travels.
What a lovely day to travel. I must say that when I rolled into Jarred’s parent’s driveway in Clarksburg, WV. I have never been more tired and I felt like I had just worried away about 2 years of my life on that drive that day. I just couldn’t believe that it didn’t stop raining once during my entire drive. Oh what was in store for the next day of driving. Jarred’s parents had the best dinner ever that night! Chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese! I’m so glad they are getting to know me so well! After dinner, we discussed the wedding and I even managed to get the girls to play Wii. We played until almost 2am again. No sleep break that night.
I got up the next morning, showered and packed quickly and got on the road. I managed to get to Grove City without any problems (2.5 hours into the drive and 2.5 hours away from home). I stopped for lunch and gas and then continued on. I get about 30 miles from Erie and it begins to snow and snow it does—and starts to get harder. I get about 5 miles from the 90 and it starts to Lake Effect snow. Traffic slows down to about 20 mph and I realized that I have no ability to cross lanes, my car won’t make it through the few inches of snow that has built up in between lanes. So I just stayed in my lane. Ahead of me was a SUV and he moves over into the left lane. Then he swerves back into my lane and slams on his brakes. I hit my brakes slowly (that’s all you can really do at 20 mph) and then my car started to slide in the snow. I had no steering and the car just slid off into the guardrail and into the ditch. I called my mom who called a tow truck to come and tow me out and even the state trooper came to check on the car. 45 minutes later I was out of the ditch and back on the road. I didn’t drive over 20 mph until I got out of the snow band and then I didn’t go much faster the rest of the way home.
We took my car into the repair shop and found out the extent of the damage. $1800 to fix a scratch that runs the length of my car, a large dent in my fender, a cracked bumper, cracked light carriage, and a bent rim. What a wonderful thing to happen to my nice new car… However, I did have my dad drive my car the other day and he said that it has to be the tires because it just slid down the driveway and took forever to stop. So I guess the accident could have been a lot worse, and thank goodness for insurance!
I’ll try to post pictures of the car as soon as the snow stops here.
