Not Just Another Journey

…the journey started like any other of my monthly NY-PA journeys, during the winter months:  snow in the air but clear roads. I’ve done this drive one way almost 200 times; back and forth monthly since March 2006. That would be over 6 ½ years, 80 months, 360 miles a trip for a total of 57,600 miles, and I’m being a little conservative in my estimate, since there have been a few times where I’ve done the drive twice in a month. The drive is mainly four-lane freeways, and I general follow one of two possible routes, outlined on the map below.

The “green” route is my preferred route – less traffic and more scenic, as it travels through the hills of the southern Finger Lakes in NY and the mountains of Northern PA. The “yellow” route is my “poor weather route”, as it is more heavily traveled, and along the NY Thruway and PA Turnpike, which generally plows and salts their roads with more frequency than the other State DOT-maintained roads. I’ve resorted to the “yellow” route maybe 30 times out of the 200. The difference, time wise, between the two is just about the same – the drive takes 5-6 hours in good weather and traffic. The longest one of these trips has taken was 8 hours, back in 2009, in the spring when I was caught in accident-delayed traffic not once, not twice, but three times on the same trip.

In the winter months, there are several factors that go into which route I take, and whether I go at all. Thanks to technology, I can get real-time road conditions and accident reports on 511NY.org and 511PA.org. I won’t travel a road that is already snow-covered for a significant distance, where the temperatures are below 25 degrees, at the time I am ready to leave, and I won’t travel a road that is expecting several inches of snow during my drive. In the past 80 months, I have had to cancel the drive twice, and I have driven on snow covered roads, where it wasn’t accurately predicted or shown, three other times; those times, the accumulation was light. I do travel with a winter-emergency kit that does include an extra blanket, a shovel, salt, jumper cables, flares, etc. 

So…this particular trip, there was light snow in the forecast for the first part of my trip, but temperatures were slightly above the freezing mark. In checking the 511 websites, the US 15 freeway was reported as snow covered, with a couple of accidents, so that ruled out the “green” route. The “yellow” route was reporting clear/wet conditions, so I decided to embark and take the “yellow” route.

I left at 12:15PM, a relatively normal time of departure for one of these trips, with the car loaded with my suitcase, laptops, Christmas presents, and of course my tunes. The roads were in fact wet, and the snow was falling very lightly and not sticking.

Less than one hour outside of Rochester, eastbound on the NY Thruway…brake lights…and then everyone comes to a stop. And we all inch…and inch…and inch…it takes 30 minutes to go one mile…and sure enough, an accident. A single car went off the left side of the road, where there was a wide wooded median, and hit a tree. The ambulance was still on the scene and a lane was closed, which explained the backup.  But soon enough, we were all moving again.

Another 30 minutes after that, brake lights again…but this time, we didn’t come to a complete stop. This time, there was a state trooper with the lights on, driving slowly on the shoulder. Why? There was a man, walking in the woods alongside of the Thruway, walking parallel to it, and honestly, he appeared to be just wandering.  There wasn’t an abandoned car nearby, and I don’t remember seeing one at all anywhere nearby before that point. It was…odd. A little out-of-the-ordinary, but five minutes later, everyone is all back up to speed and eventually the trip begins to have a flow – moving along, steady speed, no worries – routine. I reached Syracuse, turned south, and for the next two hours all went well.

Coming into Scranton from the north on Interstate 81, there is a long downhill stretch as you come down from the Endless Mountains, into the Lackawanna Valley that forms the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area.  The exit for the PA Turnpike is at the bottom of this long hill, before you get into the city Scranton. The exit ramp is actually two exits, an exit to get off of I-81, and a second immediate exit to get into the Turnpike. So, I took both ramps, and drove through the EZ-Pass lane. At this point, in my direction, the Turnpike goes back up the hill that I-81 came down, but makes a 180-degree turn. The right lane on my side was closed for construction, so I got into the left lane and started to take the uphill curve. As I was rounding the turn, I noticed an 18-wheeler coming down the hill on the other side. It seemed to be that the truck was going kind of fast. In my head:  is that truck starting to tip over? Holy sh*t it’s tipping over…it’s going to fall on top of me BANG SCREECH…silence. Elapsed time:  4 seconds. (In hindsight, I think I ducked. I pulled over to the shoulder, calmly, and looked over my shoulder to see the truck sliding on its side, down the highway, along the median wall. I looked at my center console where I normally keep my iPod, mounted in cup-holder mounting device. The IPod, still mounted in the device, was on the floor on the passenger side of the car. There was broken glass on the floor but I don’t think I really registered that fact. I calmly (probably in a trance) put the car in park, put on the parking brake (routine), turned the radio off, and turned the car off. I opened the driver’s side door (I may have had to shove it), but the door opened, I calmly got out, and I tried to close the door. It wouldn’t close. I calmly brushed off the broken glass pieces off of me like one brushes off snow. I looked down the hill, and the truck had slid to a stop, still lying on its side. A woman came over to me to let me know that she had already called 9-1-1. She asked if I was OK, and I said I was. (I said I was because, in fact, I was.) Did I bang my head? No. Did I have a headache, feel dizzy, anything? No. I was lucky. Yes, yes I was. Where was I headed?  Near Philadelphia. Where was I coming from? Near Rochester, NY. Did I need a ride?  No. (Note, I hadn’t really comprehended that yes, I did need a ride.)  Then I looked at my car, thought I probably should take some pictures, and that's when things started registering…

…as the tractor-trailer was toppling over, the top of the trailer stuck the top of the left side of my car, near the windshield.  It didn’t land on top of my car, but slid diagonally down the driver’s side of the car, breaking the driver’s side windows and deploying the side-curtain air bags. Nothing directly hit me, and I didn’t directly hit anything. I realized that I had a little cut on my left ear, but that was it.  The woman that was standing there was offering me a ride as far as Allentown, which I politely declined. The first of the first responders; the fire police, drove up and asked me all of the questions the woman asked me, and asked if I needed treatment, which I politely declined. About five minutes later, the ambulance pulled up, and asked the same set of questions, but this time, everyone was trying to convince me to get looked at anyway, just in case. I think that in my mind, I thought that going to the Emergency Room was going to lead to a delay in me getting home.

Thoughts:  I’d better call someone to let them know what happened. How do I say I was an accident, my car looks totaled, but that I was OK? I don’t want to worry anyone but, holy crap, another five seconds and… So I called a close friend. I don’t know how I sounded. I tried to sound normal and calm. I tried to throw in a couple of jokes. But I think I eventually said something like “I just need to talk to someone so I stay calm so I don’t start over-thinking and over-analyzing.” How am I going to get home?  My friend probably asked me that question. My friend probably also tried to talk me into going to the ER. However it happened, somewhere along my “thought” process, I decided that it would be better to get officially cleared, and be sitting in an ER, versus standing on the shoulder of a highway, at dusk in the cold, waiting for…hmmm. OK, I need to call my parents – probably one of the hardest calls I’ve ever made.  It was hard in that again, I don’t want to worry anyone, but in fact, I knew that was going to happen. So, I called, and then soon after, I took my first ambulance ride ever and went to the Emergency Room.  That was about 45 minutes after the accident happened, but the police hadn’t arrived on the scene yet. The EMT told me that this was routine for someone to leave the scene before the police had arrived; they would inform the police where I was being taken, and a trooper would stop by to get any information needed. The EMT took my information anyway just in case.

My parents worked in hospitals for their entire careers, before both retiring this year; so, I was familiar with the workings of an ER. The process was routine and I was eventually cleared and released after getting my vitals taken, and going through what I think were concussion tests. I was asked if my tetanus shot was up to date, which it barely was (my five-year mark was one month away), so they gave me a tetanus shot – which would cause me the most pain of anything that day.  The trooper did come by to take my information and statement, and gave me an accident report number to use for the follow-on car insurance claim.  He gave me the name and phone number of the towing company that took my car, so I could get the rest of my things. I asked the trooper if he knew how the other driver was. (It didn’t occur to me that I never walked down the hill to see if he was OK, but he was surrounded by firemen and EMTs.) The trooper said that he in fact was OK, though it took everyone some time to get him out of the truck. My parents had left for the 2 hour drive up to get me. Somewhere in the two-hour ER process, I texted a group of friends that I check in with on these monthly trips. I have five or six people (including the one friend that I called from the scene) that I text when I arrive at home (PA or NY) just to let them know I arrived. Since I was sitting in the ER at the time I should have been arriving home, I needed to let them know.   So I spent the rest of my time in the ER texting and talking on the phone, and again, this was really more to keep me from over-thinking about things and keep my mind occupied. My parents arrived before 8PM, where we then drove to towing company to get the rest of my things.

As we were getting ready to leave, the attendant at the garage told us two things:  first, they were just about finished lifting the truck back upright. Second, to add insult to (lack-of) injury, if we were headed towards Philly, the PA turnpike was closed in both directions. There was an accident further down the road, where two vehicles caught fire, and the highway was closed indefinitely. So, what should have been a straight drive of less than two hours from that point, took almost 3 hours taking a handful of back roads. I finally arrived at my parents, car-less but other otherwise completely intact, at 11:30PM;  11 hours after leaving Western NY.
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First, I do have to say thanks to: my parents, my friends (especially the ones I was in contact with via phone or text throughout that ordeal), the woman who stopped behind me to see if I was OK, offered a ride, and kept me company for 45 minutes until I got into the ambulance; the South Abington Township Fire Department, the PA State Police, the PA Turnpike maintenance crew that quickly arrived on the scene, Lispi’s Towing in Wilkes-Barre, and the ER Staff at Community Medical Center/Geisinger in Scranton.

I find it interesting that I spent the month of November writing about 30 things I am thankful for, and in one event, I am specifically thankful for nine of them:  family, Daniel (all of whom I was heading to see for the holidays), friends, co-workers, technology (I’ll expand on this later), first responders, nurses/medical staff, and volunteers.

In the week-plus since then, I celebrated Christmas with my family and friends, I’ve told this story a couple dozen times, and I’ve thought about it quite often. I don’t think I’ve totally wrapped my head around all of it, and maybe I never will.  I did go through a brief period of ifs:  if only I was five seconds earlier, or had been driving a foot over to the right, I think the trailer would have missed me completely. On the other hand, if I was five seconds later or driving a foot over to the left, the trailer would have landed on top of my car instead of down the side, and…well, the possibilities are worse. Or, if I had only stayed on I-81 a little longer and got onto the PA Turnpike further south…or…or… This was a combination of GREAT luck, but bad luck at the same time. In less seriousness, this happened on the shortest daylight day of the year, and the supposed last day of the world – did that mean anything? I spent the week poking fun at the really-cheesy car accident lawyer commercials in Rochester – did that mean anything?

But in the end, there is one over-riding thought I keep coming back to. I wrote above that this event made me thankful for nine of the items I wrote about in November, but I only listed eight above. (Did you pay attention carefully?) The ninth thing from that list is – TODAY. http://jemacedo9.blogspot.com/2012/11/november-month-of-thanks-day-18.html  (As an interesting side note, nine is my favorite number, my birth day, and in numerology-speak, I am a complete nine. But I digress…)  As much as road trips and journeys are a running theme in this blog, literally and figuratively, so is being thankful for today, and not taking life and close ones for granted.  Nowhere does this concept become more evident than when you sit and realize that you narrowly escaped something tragic. There are plenty of clichés out there; in the blink of an eye, any given moment, etc.  But it is all true.

So, as much as this may have been “not just another journey”, in fact, the end result is still the same – this was a journey within THE journey:  significant, yes, but we all still have places to go, things to do, and people to be with, and the road could change in an instant.
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By the way: 

1. My return trip? I had a nine-hour window to fit in my drive, with freezing rain approaching PA from the south in the morning, and heavy snow approaching NY from the west in the evening. My drive (taking the “yellow route”) was a completely uneventful five-hour drive.
2. What song was playing on my iPod at the time of the accident? I know this not from memory, but since my iPod disconnected and was flung aside in the accident; the song paused, so I was able to look at it later. The song was “Bold Changes” by Kyle Eastwood, a jazz bassist and the son of Clint Eastwood. A sign? A message?