Catching Up With The Coutts: ICY ROADS MAKE FOR DANGEROUS DRIVES

I know you are all itching to know what happened to me yesterday,

so having taken the day off to recoup,

I will spill.

I drove to Lubbock Friday to go to a friend's bridal shower and hang out with my girls.

Everything was great!

Made it there safe. Had a blast.

Leaving Sunday morning, it was drizzling, but nothing bad.

About 20 minutes south of Amarillo, the snow got bad.

You could see totally fine, unless you were behind another car.

But nothing was sticking to the road.

Once I drove through Amarillo, I had to take a back road to get to 87

[which is the road that takes me home].

It was still snowing, but not where you couldn't see,

however, snow was sticking to the road.

I adjusted my speed accordingly, and was doing great.

11:45ish

I came up over a hill, and going down the hill,

I hit ice.

I didn't break, or turn the steering wheel at all.

As soon as my tires hit it, my car jerked to the left,

then did a 180 to the right.

My thoughts?

Jesus, I am so scared right now. Please protect me.

I thought I was going to die.

I shot off the road, down a steep grass hill, through a barbed wire fence, and finally stopped.

All sideways.

[If you check out the first picture, you can barely see the nice man's car on the road…well I went down that hill diagonally, so I slid pretty dang far]

I opened my eyes to find, first, that I was still alive.

Second, glass all over me.

Third, I'm in the middle of a field.

Fourth, I'm really alive? [trying to catch my breath]

Fifth, my side airbags deployed.

Sixth, where on earth is my phone?

I found it where my feet were.

I had no clue who to call first.

I had to push hard to get my door open.

My car had dug a nice little hole from sliding through the field.

I stood up and opened my back door to grab my jacket [I wasn't cold at all…strangely…adrenaline].

And I called 911.

Then I called David. He didn't answer, which put me into a panic and I started crying.

I called my mom and she stayed on the phone with me until the nice man [read a little further] came down to help me.

An 18-wheeler stopped to check on me then continued on his way because a nice man had stopped and walked all the way down to me.

David finally called back and felt like the worst person in the world for not answering his phone [he's not. not even close]

He let me sit in his car until the sheriff showed up.

I couldn't stop telling him thank you.

It probably took 45 minutes before I realized it was stinking cold cold outside, and snowing still.

I sat in the Sheriff's car until the EMT arrived and checked me out.

I passed. Score.

Then the State Trooper showed up and I got passed off to him.

I had to talk with the insurance company for an hour,

but got everything worked out.

[that needed to be worked out at that moment]

It took the tow truck an hour and a half to get my car out…

and I'm pretty sure he did more damage to it.

[and yes, he blocked both lanes of traffic.]

[side note, do y'all see how steep that drop off is? I can't believe I didn't roll.]

I asked the state trooper about that and he said he would up the damages in his report [hehe].

I also got to see the state trooper give a guy, who thought he was better than everyone else and tried to drive around the tow truck on the shoulder, a ticket [haha, sucker].

And I asked the trooper all about the gadgets and gizmos in his car.

Cop cars are pretty cool [especially the chargers]

but not in the snow.

Goodness no.

Let's remember that I just shot off the road,

and the troopers car can't get a grip on anything.

We were sliding everywhere, going 5 mph, trying to get to the top of the hill.

Talk about reliving my nightmare.

I finally got to the tow truck place, cleaned out the car, got a cab, and was on my way to the airport.

David found me a flight home at 6:45.

Thank goodness.

I did not want to stay the night.

I got to the airport at 5.

That is correct.

It took me 5 dang hours to get to the tow truck place.

I had to stare at my poor car and the damage for 5 hours.

But I am safe, sore [luckily that is it], and happy to be home.
I'm still finding glass in my skin, but that's no biggie.

We're hoping the car is totaled so that we don't have to drive down to get it.

The cop said I was one of the first accident's he had handled that I had a good outlook.

I told him, it's a car. I am so thankful to be safe and and walking away. A car can be replaced. A human cannot. What can you do? I could complain and be angry that my car, which we just put new tires on [$500. Lame], is beat up, but I'm not going to. Like I said, it's a car, an object. Yeah, it's inconvenient, but I don't care. I'm just happy to be alive and sore.

Here's some pics from the tow truck garage that my car is currently housed in.