Well, here is a story to tell, about an event that shook us up.  We feel truly blessed to have come out of it unscathed.

We were on the Interstate 405 this morning at 8:30 a.m. going toward Bellevue. I had on the cruise control, and in this new car it actually has a would-be ‘force field’ that keeps you at a fixed distance from cars in front of you,  so that it does not take any effort to not be tailgating on the highway. I try to be a good five car lengths back from the next car.  This may have saved us today. I was also focused on what was ahead of me, not at all distracted by anything going on. Isabel was with me. A pickup truck in the middle of three lanes suddenly started going left toward the cement divider in the highway and then sharply went right and started sliding and swaying and then flipped over, rolled right back up, and was then sliding perpendicularly across the highway toward the right, while also moving directly toward me on the highway toward me. All of this happened of course in seconds and I have no idea what caused him to do this, but it was some scary physics in action all over the road. I was concerned about not only not running into him, but also not having someone plow into me from behind, because even on the weekend at that early hour, there was a fair amount of traffic moving over 60 miles per hour. I started slowing down and his vehicle stopped less than five feet in front of me and I was able to come to a quick stop. The man got out of the truck… so we saw he was all right, if a little dazed. We asked him if he needed anything. He said he was OK, and we moved on around him. There was all kinds of debris on the highway from the crash. Isabel’s eyes had been closed the whole time, she has a lot of anxiety when in the car and feared the worst was about to happen. I felt extremely fortunate to have avoided colliding with him, also that he made it out OK, although his vehicle was pretty damaged. It was the worst accident I had ever witnessed personally.

It’s weird that I had just been thinking yesterday, not morbidly but practically, that I need to have everything set up in the event that Isabel and I were both to perish on the highway in an instant, the way it always happens. I think I pretty much have things arranged for such an eventuality. That said, I’m doing everything possible to avoid such an occurrence. Today we feel especially blessed.