Normally I don't post in the middle of the day, but I decided this was well worth it. I must share the most ironic, yet terrifying story that I've come across in awhile. Unfortunately, it had to happen to me. These things just know how to find me. Do I have some weird radar attached to me?
This morning I had my doctors appointment an hour and a half away. The weather was kind of crappy, snow falling everywhere, so my mom suggested, more like forced me to take her SUV, as it has four wheel drive and I was going a good distance away. She has a 2000 Chevy Blazer with 115,000 miles on it. God bless the thing, seriously, as there's been no major problems with it......until TODAY! I'm not a huge fan of her SUV just because it's much more clunky than my 2005 Chevy Impala and is old. Not that I have anything against things that are old, but I was just waiting for something to go wrong with it one day as she doesn't always take the best care of it. I've also never been a fan of it in the snow. My Impala has all wheel drive and actually goes through the snow just fine, but I was left with less than a choice.
I was about fifteen minutes away from where I was headed and I started to drive into some heavy snow, so being smart, I hit the button for 4HI, as it had been in 2HI. I could see the approaching snow on the road, but quickly noticed that the SUV was indeed not switching over, and not only was it not switching over, it seemed that it was stuck between the gears. The next thing that I knew, the whole entire truck locked up, I lost total control of it as it became unresponsive, and it started spinning through the snow. Luckily, the guy behind me was a good fifty yards back or he would have most likely been toast.
At the time when this happened, I wasn't going all that fast. I was going around 45 to 50 mph. The reasoning for this was that a: the snow was not lying on the road all that heavily yet, and had the SUV done what it was supposed to, I would have been fine, and b: the speed limit for how slow you can go on our turnpike is 45mph. If you go slower, they can ticket you unless the weather is really, really bad, and the weather was not bad enough to warrant me from being ticket free.
All in all, I spun four times before going careening sideways towards the very low guardrail. On the other side of the guardrail was a steep hill. I pretty much knew at that time that I was going over the guardrail, as it was too low to sustain anything other than a small car. At the speed I was going and with the velocity of it, there was no way I wasn't going over it. Then, all of a sudden, the car just stopped. I didn't hit the break, not that it would have helped, or do anything of the like, as, like I mentioned, I had no control over the car. It simply just stopped dead. I breathed a sigh of a relief, realized I was facing the wrong way on the shoulder of the turnpike, and when I looked out my window was so close to the guardrail that I was physically unable to see it from the car, as I was now turned so that the drivers side was against the guard rail.
I sat there catching my breathe for a few seconds, when, out of nowhere, the car suddenly, while still in drive, reverses a few feet bringing me off of the shoulder and into an emergency pull off that I didn't know was there. I was still facing the wrong way, but could now see the guardrail out the front of the vehicle. Had I not had this happen to me, I would not have believed it.
Someone was watching out for me. It was as simple as that. First of all, there was no reason for me to stop dead before I crashed into that guardrail, none, and I know that, all dramatics aside. The car was going too fast to just stop, the roads still had snow on them and were slippery, and I never even hit the guardrail. In fact, there is zero physical damage to me and the SUV, however I'm unsure how. Also, I was calm enough to know that I did not have my foot on the gas when it reversed itself, and even if I did, the car was in drive. I had not changed that. Some higher power had to will my car off of the shoulder and into the emergency park so that someone else would not hit me as they careened down the snowy road. Thank you.
I sat there for close to twenty minutes thankful, but also trying to figure out what had happened. I also could not get the SUV back into just 2HI. Finally, it cooperated. I debated what to do. Do I continue to my appointment, or do I sit here and call someone? My mom wasn't home and no one else I knew was available to come help me out, so I didn't have much of a choice. Besides, in the twenty minutes that I sat there on the side of the road facing the wrong way, not one person stopped to make sure that I was okay. That being said, I had no other choice but to cautiously proceed to my appointment now that I was finally locked back into 2HI and drive slower than the speed limit, pray a lot, and will the car not to slide on the snow covered road.
I made it to the appointment, but did some mild sliding. After the appointment though, I realized that I had an hour and a half drive home, and it was probably not a good idea to do that without consulting someone, as I was still unsure exactly what had happened to make the car react as such. I knew I hadn't hit a patch of ice or anything close, and even if I had, the car would not have locked up like that. Something was wrong. At best guess, the gears locked and as long as I didn't try to switch gears again I would probably be fine, but I didn't really know that. Even though I felt like I was in 2HI, I also didn't know that either. If the gears had malfunctioned while changing it to 4HI, how was I able to tell that it really had switched back to 2HI?
My mom still wasn't home, but I tried to call her anyway. With no avail, I called the only other person I knew wasn't working or otherwise engaged and hoped she would pick up. Sadly, I called my mom's friend. She isn't my aunt, but she's more of an aunt to me than my real one, so I call her as such. I didn't know why I was calling her, but I just needed some sort of opinion on what I should do. I also didn't have any money to just take it to get looked at. Yeah, I guess I could use my credit card, but beyond that, it wasn't my car and I couldn't really authorize anything being done to it until I talked to my mom. She would both flip and never pay me back. That's how she is and I'm still pretty sure I'm going to get blamed for this somehow.
After about a half hour of talking to her, her calling her husband, and other random oddities, she came up with an evil genius plan. She literally asked me if I saw some sort of garage around there. I did, there was one across the street, but again, there wasn't much that I could do. She then told me that I'm young, cute, and have boobs, and that I should go over there, hope there's men working, which there most likely would be, and do what a twenty three year old girl knows how to do. After I did that, I should pray that they help me for free and at least give me an opinion on if I should drive home or not, then we'd figure it out from there. She is pushing sixty. I love her.
Having no other choice, I did just that. Under my jacket I was wearing a semi low cut shirt. It wasn't so low that I looked like a whore and my boobs were sticking out, but low enough to tell that I had great ta tas, and if I bent over, you'd have a nice view. I unbuttoned my jacket, walked into the garage, and proceeded to tell my story while crying. The crying wasn't planned. The crying just happened. I was still pretty mortified over the entire situation. Sadly, this plan of hers worked better than it really should of, which says a lot for society, let me tell you. I also look like I'm around seventeen or eighteen and I had mommy's car, so I'm sure that helped my case.
Not only did the garage take the car and look it over, but they also test drove it to make sure it was one hundred percent safe to drive home. They checked all my wheels and determined that yes, it was indeed in 2HI and I could drive it home. I was also told NOT to try to put it into any other wheel drive and just take it very easy while driving through the snow and hope I don't slide. So what what wrong?
After they played with the car for a little while, they realized that, while trying to switch to 4HI, the SUV malfunctioned most likely do to age and put the SUV into 4LO at 45 to 50 mph. For those of you that don't know a lot about cars, 4LO is not just a shitty version of 4HI. 4LO gives the car torque and provides zero grip in the snow. You also aren't to drive over 20 mph in 4LO or what happened to me, will happen. Now the SUV needs to be looked at, as they determined through playing with it that if we try to switch the wheel drive in it, it's going to work incorrectly and not throw us into the wheel drive we want to be in. This is bad. But for the record, Mom, IT WAS NOT MY FAULT AND THE GARAGE EVEN SAID SO!!! Also, they did all this to the car for me and they did it for FREE! My aunt says it pays to be young, cute, and have nice ta ta's. This is the first time I've ever agreed with anyone on that.
I made it home very cautiously. I will never drive my moms truck again, as like I said, what happened was caused most likely by the age of the vehicle. Even if she gets this fixed, it probably still has a bunch of unforeseen issues. Even she knows she should get rid of it, but being that she's had no major problems, she hasn't bothered. Even what happened today isn't a "major" problem when you look at all the things that could go wrong like the engine blowing and what not, but it's a deadly one. As for the irony part out of all of this, she had me take her SUV so I'd be safer in the snow than I was in my car. I don't think it worked out correctly. Epic fail!
On a lighter note, during the appointment I had today, I found something that I can take to thin my blood. You see, the doctors didn't want to put me on blood thinners yet, despite my issues and the fear that my thick blood will get stuck in the small hole in my heart and kill me, as they figure there are far too many side effects and it would not be helpful. They told me if I could find a safe alternative, to please, by all means, go for it. Apparently fish oil is great for this in the correct dosage, so I now have the correct dosage and fish oil. (If anyone else is having the same problem and would like it, comment me and I will get back to you ASAP.) Hopefully I will start feeling better and the doctors will see a difference in my blood, forcing me to no longer be afraid of death due to the blood to hole ratio I have going on.
Also, I finished reading Twilight today. I shall hopefully review it later tonight. No promises, but that's my goal. I would preferably like to post again tonight. I have yet to tell my mom what happened with her SUV, however I think I hear her pulling in the driveway with my nice, safe car now. I'm too lazy to get up and look, but the dogs seem to also think it's her. They're wrong a lot. Either way, I'll eventually update you on how the talk with her goes. She's slightly insensitive and will find a way to blame me for this. It's just kind of how she is. I'm sure it's not going to go well.
In case I don't get back on tonight, I shall post my song for the day. This is the first song I listened to after calming down and getting back on the road. It's very relaxing. It's called Hurricane and its by The Hush Sound off of their newest album Goodbye Blues. I was unable to find this song on youtube, so to give credit where credit is due, I'd like to thank Pretty.Odd. little (this is not meant in a mean way, please see link for Pretty.Odd.) Ryan Ross for turning the nation on to Seeqpod through his awesome blog.
BTW, my sense of hearing and the dogs were both wrong. My mom is indeed not home yet.
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