Journal: Entry for Palatine
Back on March 24th, I crashed my beloved 2004 Chevy Suburban (big, beautiful gas guzzling monster). It was Saturday night and me and a friend were headed to the bar for some drinks and food after work. It had begun to snow just recently in the evening and it was coming down hard and the wind was blowing fiercely.
Me and my friend, Heather, entered the highway. The on ramp is a very sharp turn, which causes one to go slow even in good weather. I entered fine, but the on ramp lane quickly turns into an exit ramp lane, so I needed to get over. I signaled, looked and began to get over to my left. After getting into the next lane, my truck began to fishtail to the left. That's when it all went bad.
I was only doing about 35 mph. I honestly don't remember if I corrected in the wrong direction or not. But the back end kept going. We ended up doing a full spin plus a little more. When the car finally stopped its spin, we were headed for the concrete guard rail on the right side of the highway. The front right side of my truck hit and we bounced back about five feet. Me and Heather suffered only minor injuries. I bruised my sternum where my seat belt lay across my chest. Heather got a nasty bruise on her right knee. We both had some sore muscles for a while in our upper backs. Probably some minor whiplash. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have gotten on an elevated highway while it was snowing that heavily and had only begun so recently that there hadn't been any plowing done yet.
Cutting out some unimportant details here, to make this shorter, my car was towed. Heather's husband came and picked us up. Well, finally the insurance company decided to total the car. This particularly sucked because I only had three more payments left on it. The insurance company took a little too long, in my opinion, to get me a check, but they did give me more for it than I thought they would, so I was pleased about that.
I used that money as a down payment on my new vehicle. It's not my dream car, nor anything special. I just needed a ride--going without for three weeks is quite annoying. Anyway, I bought a 2010 Jeep Compass. It has 4WD which my Suburban did not. I bought the Suburban when I lived in suburban L.A. There's not a lot of call for 4WD there, unless you go to the mountains a lot, which I didn't. 4WD was not a concern when I bought it, therefore. The Jeep was rather cheap. It's a manual transmission and doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. Again, I was going for transportation rather than what I really wanted. More good news is that with my very good credit rating I got a 1.85% interest rate and monthly payments under $150 per month.
Anyway, that's my little story.
Me and my friend, Heather, entered the highway. The on ramp is a very sharp turn, which causes one to go slow even in good weather. I entered fine, but the on ramp lane quickly turns into an exit ramp lane, so I needed to get over. I signaled, looked and began to get over to my left. After getting into the next lane, my truck began to fishtail to the left. That's when it all went bad.
I was only doing about 35 mph. I honestly don't remember if I corrected in the wrong direction or not. But the back end kept going. We ended up doing a full spin plus a little more. When the car finally stopped its spin, we were headed for the concrete guard rail on the right side of the highway. The front right side of my truck hit and we bounced back about five feet. Me and Heather suffered only minor injuries. I bruised my sternum where my seat belt lay across my chest. Heather got a nasty bruise on her right knee. We both had some sore muscles for a while in our upper backs. Probably some minor whiplash. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have gotten on an elevated highway while it was snowing that heavily and had only begun so recently that there hadn't been any plowing done yet.
Cutting out some unimportant details here, to make this shorter, my car was towed. Heather's husband came and picked us up. Well, finally the insurance company decided to total the car. This particularly sucked because I only had three more payments left on it. The insurance company took a little too long, in my opinion, to get me a check, but they did give me more for it than I thought they would, so I was pleased about that.
I used that money as a down payment on my new vehicle. It's not my dream car, nor anything special. I just needed a ride--going without for three weeks is quite annoying. Anyway, I bought a 2010 Jeep Compass. It has 4WD which my Suburban did not. I bought the Suburban when I lived in suburban L.A. There's not a lot of call for 4WD there, unless you go to the mountains a lot, which I didn't. 4WD was not a concern when I bought it, therefore. The Jeep was rather cheap. It's a manual transmission and doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. Again, I was going for transportation rather than what I really wanted. More good news is that with my very good credit rating I got a 1.85% interest rate and monthly payments under $150 per month.
Anyway, that's my little story.