Commute from HELL

Okay, so maybe that post title is a little overdramatic. But it probably got your attention, right? Anyway, you can decide for yourself momentarily how exaggerated the title is.

My commute to work is about 15 minutes and 6 miles. Nothing crazy, right? There’s still a fair amount of ice in the median lanes, but the roads weren’t too bad today, despite a daytime high of 21 degrees or so.

As I pulled out of my apartment’s parking lot, another car across the street was getting ready to turn onto the side street as well. We got there at about the same time, so I gave the other driver the hand wave. She looked straight at me, saw the gesture, and. . . shook her head! I couldn’t believe it! She shook off the hand wave! Who does that?! I laughed incredulously for a moment as I made the turn first. Anyway, that’s not exactly hellacious; I just thought it was amusing.

The next 14 minutes were rather uneventful. I was just enjoying various harmonious alternative selections from my iPod. Well, as I was closing in on my turn into the parking lot at work, I almost got T-boned! By a soccer dad in a minivan!

I was in the inside lane heading southbound on Yellowstone Highway just south of Sunnyside going around 30-35 mph. Yellowstone is a four lane highway with a center turn lane. There was a large red suburban in the outside lane that had slowed to turn onto Pederson St. and since my parking lot is just south of Pederson I had slowed so I could merge into the outside lane once the suburban had left the highway. Unfortunately, as I slowed, I was blocked quite well from the view of a white Chrysler minivan that was turning from Pederson to head north on Yellowstone. As the suburban turned, the minivan shot out onto Yellowstone, completely oblivious to my presence.

I noticed there wasn’t any oncoming traffic, so as I swerved left across the icy median, I went into the northbound inside lane to create more space. As I passed the van (the driver of which – a man, so I can’t make any sexist remarks J – was actually looking away from me to check for oncoming traffic in the northbound lanes), I honked my horn and swerved back onto my side of the highway. I then slowed down and turned into the parking lot. Naturally, everything happened very quickly. Even so, I have a perfect little two second “film” in my mind of how it all unfolded. I can even see the side of the driver’s head with his scruffy black beard.

Just last week my insurance agent called me to try to sell me accident forgiveness coverage. Since I’ve never been in an accident, let alone caused one, I didn’t see a need to pay more for that coverage. So, naturally, I turned it down. But since that phone call I’ve been more paranoid about getting in an accident (you know, suspecting that I was somehow jinxed by turning down the opportunity to pay my All State dude more dinero). And then this happened. The timing is simply uncanny.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I felt like I had just gotten off an exhilarating roller coaster ride. Is that weird? I didn’t even have road rage. That’s definitely weird. Anyway, a couple work associates saw the whole thing and as they got out of their own cars I think they were angrier about the situation than I was. One of them sits in the same area that I’m in, so word got out to everyone pretty quickly. He said this: “That wasn’t just good driving, that was amazing driving.” Thanks Nate!

Once I got to my desk, I said a little prayer of thanks. Then I texted my Mom to thank her for teaching me how to drive well. Her mom and her aunt were race car drivers in Northern California when she was younger (and when they were younger, of course). In fact, Aunt Charlene was the first woman allowed to participate in figure eight races at her hometown raceway. I’m sure you’ll use that little tidbit of info very soon in your life. Valuable indeed.

I was also immediately grateful for sports and video games. Seriously. The whole hand-eye coordination thing was huge for me this morning. And in sports, I’ve experienced the same sensation of time seeming to slow down (hence how I found time to honk as I was careening in and out of the other lanes), so it wasn’t too tough to take advantage of it. Not to mention having some exposure to pressure situations that happen in the blink of an eye.
Thankfully, my streak of no accidents continues on through today (knock on wood).