A close call, but Queenie made it home again

It's amazing what you think about when you think you are about to be horribly injured/ die.

There was Queenie, sitting in a car on her way to Amherst, up by the New Brunswick border, last Thursday night. The trip was work-related and a colleague was driving. In a snow storm, because the stretch of privately-built road that brings you up over the ridge to the toll plaza has created a mini-vortex of wind and snow that bears no resemblance to the rest of the provincial weather. Although if Queenie remembers rightly, it was a bad night anyway, snowing when they left Halifax.

Anyways, up the ridge we were going at a steady clip, but I felt as if I were in safe hands. Up the ridge we were going, talking nineteen to the dozen about some movie or another, which is what we often talk about, I can't remember now when suddenly, whhoooooooooh, the car takes off and slides over into the right hand lane of the highway. The driver tries to wrestle it back towards the centre lane and neither of us have said a word or reacted out loud yet, when whoooooooooooh, the car slides to the left, then SPINS round in the middle of the highway.

To me it felt like a couple of times: it was probably only once. But all I can see in my head is the car sliding round and round in a white, white landscape that was completely disorienting. I could feel the back end of the car pulling away from the steering wheel and the tension in the steel as the car teetered on its wheels.

I'm thinking, wow, the car is spinning really fast. I wonder what's going to happen next? Which way are we going to face when we stop?

The correct way as it happens. In the middle of the highway. Unfortunately, the car then slid really fast, sideways, towards the other side of the highway. We felt the same sensation as if you slid off a ski-lift without being ready, down a steep slope very fast with one ski turned the wrong way!

Uh-Uh-uhh-Uh-Uh-Uh-waaaaaaaah.

I was waiting for the car to flip. I kept thinking, it's going to flip now. I can feel it wobbling. I wonder will it hurt? I really hope I don't die. I don't want to die here in this place. And my poor parents. They will be well put out if I die here this week - I'll ruin their holiday plans. Although I don't want to be injured either. Ohhhhh, I really hope it doesn't hurt.

I even thought about those three Canadian soldiers who were injured in the car bomb last week. I wondered whether they got a chance to think about it before it happened.

And then we slid to a stop against a snow bank facing the road we had just left.

We sat for a moment. Neither of us had uttered a sound throughout the whole incident. I coudn't believe how calm I felt.

Are you okay?

Yeah, he said

That was fun.

I'm not sharing your idea of fun, he said.

He put the car in 4WD and got us back on the road, and we kept going and eventually got to a petrol station and checked the car and it was fine. Then we made it to Amherst and went to the hotel bar and had a couple of drinks and we were fine.

Except every time I close my eyes now, I am sitting belted up in the car with my hands loosely folded in my lap, and I am spinning round and round in a white white night-time world.

Round and round I go.

I marvel at the fact that there were no other cars around. That we had all that space to spin and slide without hurting ourselves or anyone else.

That the driver had the presence of mind to pull the car back towards the middle of the highway, so that we didn't plunge down the side of the ridge and hit the trees.

That he remembered to take his foot off the accelerator.

That the guy who designed the road put a wide enough strip in the middle that we stopped before we slid into the path of the oncoming truck I remember. Although I don't know if that's an accurate memory or a false one.

That there was no railguard in the middle for us to slam against.

Shazz says I have to put the thoughts away because I could inadvertently call it upoon me again. I'm sure they'll go away in a bit.

Anyways, Queenie's back. What's left of her anyways, after an eight week election campaign and a mental week at work this week instead of a nice calm restorative week. The rest of her mind will be along eventually, after she spends the weekend pulling herself together. Unfortunately, she's very tired and has a fever today. So we might not get up to blogging speed immediately.

But she's very glad to be back.