A Long Day on the Road

Yesterday was an(other) extremely long and stressful day.

Here's how it was supposed to go: we would all get up, have a pleasant breakfast, get ready to go, get in the cars and have a pleasant and scenic trip to New Jersey with a nice stop for some lunch at McDonald's. It's a three hour trip down to Jersey, so I figured if we left by 9:00 a.m., we'd get Hans' car through the processing center, stop for lunch and be back on the road by 2:00 at the latest. Home to Newport by suppertime.

We did have a nice breakfast, we did get on the road by 9:10 a.m. and our trip was pleasant and scenic until we reached East Lyme, Connecticut.

Hans was following me on I-95. We were cruising along in the fast lane, when all of a sudden in front of me, at maybe a distance of two city blocks I saw a truck's tanker rise up in the air, fall to the ground and start to slide, long-wise across the freeway, towards us. It seemed so improbable that at first I just didn't understand. It was very windy yesterday. My first thought was that the wind had somehow caught the tanker and lifted it into the air (I know-- physics is not my strong suit). It was just a sight that was hard to comprehend. But all of a sudden, there was a tanker car on its side and we had to slam on the brakes and I could see fuel leaking from it and we were only maybe a football field's length from it, stuck in the fast lane and I was sure, sure that just like in the movies...that thing was going to ignite and blow. I turned around and was signalling to Hans to move, move and get off the highway away from the truck that was spilling fuel all over the freeway.

This all happened in a matter of seconds. We were blessedly just at an offramp, so we pulled the cars all the way over to the side. Hans jumped out of his car and ran right into the fray to see if he could help. I was still thinking that it was going to explode at any moment. I was truly convinced that I wouldn't lay eyes on him again. If the kids wouldn't have been in the car, I would have run right after him.

Hans saw some terrible things, which I wouldn't presume to try tell you all about. He tried to tell me, but I'm sure words cannot describe. Three people were killed. You can read all about it here:

http://www.wfsb.com/news/14494579/detail.html


Suffice it to say, we were more than a little shaken up for the rest of the day. All I could keep thinking was this: if we hadn't made one more trip to the bathroom before we left, if that stoplight hadn't been red, if, if, if...it could have been us. This accident could have taken us. It was that close. We missed it by mere seconds.

Obviously, we were at the crash site for awhile, then we needed to stop for lunch, then we hit the worst traffic in New York City. Ack. The worst. We crawled along at a snail's pace for over an hour. We had supposed that we'd be to the vehicle processing center around lunchtime. I had thought we'd eat lunch in New Jersey, not Connecticut. Finally, finally we crossed the George Washington Bridge...it was around 3:00 p.m. According to Hans, the VPC took its last car at 3:30. After a quick stop at the rest area (no, not for me, for Mr. I Feel The Need To Drink Two or Three Large Cups of Diet Coke While Driving and Have The Smallest Bladder EVER), we sped onward to the VPC, arriving around 3:25.

I had a full-blown panic attack around 3:20, convinced that we had endured a near-death experience and mind-numbing, maddening traffic for nothing and that we would have to make the same painful trip back on Monday. But. Blessedly, they took us in, processed the car, and now Katarina is on her way to Germany.

The trip back through NYC was pretty good, actually, though we hit bad traffic again in Connecticut and around the accident scene in East Lyme. The crews were still out there cleaning up the debris and the fuel. We got back into Newport around 9:00 p.m.

Not such a great day, but at the end of it...I just looked at my little family and breathed a sigh of relief.