Hi all and welcome.
I am not sure if any others have gone through these experiences because in all my 58 years I have noticed people are very reluctant to discuss this type of incident. Do we have a protector or Guardian Angel guiding and protecting us or is it simply pure dumb luck that has gotten us this far in our lives while others meet an early grave. What decides and how ? Or is it a preordained plan we are following and thus because of this we must be kept safe and out of harms' way. Well I have my belief and it is based on a series of incidences in my life which I have shared actually with very few people but I will try to tell them now.
The first incident to come to mind immediately is a time back when I was about 19 or 20 and I was out "cruising" one night in my favourite "pink Oldsmobile" a 1958 Oldsmobile. In the car was myself and two girls and another male friend. We were driving along Barton Street ( not really that important but I thought anyone from Hamilton could picture it better)and had had a few run-ins with one of those rich kid types in "daddy's car". for several blocks we had screamed profanities and insults at each other and had drag raced at stop lights. Then just as we passed Wentworth St going west he pulled up beside me and started laughing hysterically and making fun of the car I was driving. Now please picture this in your mind he is RIGHT BESIDE ME AT THIS POINT on the right hand side of me ! I don't know what happened but something snapped inside me and obviously without thinking I pulled the steering wheel as far and as fast as I could to the right in order to ... well I honestly don't know what I was thinking, running him off the road I guess but Christ almighty there were people walking on the streets and other cars and god knows what else he would have hit, and the damage to both our cars ... it was like the passing of the 15 cars - a moment of pure insanity but pull the wheel I did and got ready for the impact. But honest a god it never came. When I looked he was safely about 5 car lengths behind me. I remember being not only relieved that I had missed him but incredulous that he was not beside me any longer. When I quizzed the people in the car about how he had dropped so far back they were very non committal and never really gave me an acceptable answer. I have never forgotten this incident for if it had gone differently I would probably have been suspended from driving, maybe even put in juvenile hall for a while but regardless my whole life would have been ruined and all for a stupid one second of insanity. Many times over the years I have asked myself how did it happen ? How did he drop from right beside me and I mean absolutely right beside me to 5 cars back in an instant. To me and my daughter it is but one more instant of a guiding hand allowing me to reach this juncture in my life. Toward what final ultimate goal is yet to be determined but guiding me it is.
And now we switch forward in time to Christmas morning, 1982 I think (maybe 1981) and my wife, Carol and I are driving on the QEW a local highway leading from Burlington and Hamilton and we are heading back to Hamilton and it is raining fairly hard. We are driving my mother-in-law's Pinto. I am in the passing lane and am doing about 55 MPH's and decide to speed up to the speed limit which was 60 MPH's. Now please remember I had been used to driving fairly big cars like Lincolns and Oldsmobiles and the like so I really did not know how this car handled and how it would react to rain. Anyway I gave the accelerator just a little gas and then it happened - hydro planing of the worst kind. I totally lost control of the car and off we went in a free wheeling spin in the middle of a 4 lane highway. Now I had always been a fairly good driver, very sure of myself behind the wheel but what happened next is still a vivid memory and I still can't quite grasp an answer on what happened and why. All of a sudden the car and us was spinning madly out of control in the middle of the highway and I guess momentarily I had thoughts of this being the end. Well I remember actually being at a loss of what to do and almost in a state of panic when all of a sudden and without warning I looked up into the rear view mirror and saw us fast approaching a collision course with the guard rail and then, and I honestly 100% believe that someone or something took the wheel along with me and as calm as you may please I very calmly and assuredly steered the car - ALL THE WHILE LOOKING IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR - away from the guard rail and when the rain drops had settled we had done not a 360 but a 450 + or - and were facing the wrong way in virtually the centre of the 4 lanes with what ever traffic there was very calmly steering around us and going about their business. I vaguely remember my wife and I looking at each other stunned momentarily and then starting to laugh that sort of nervous laugh of anyone who has had a close call and when the coast was clear I simply turned the car around and off we went. But the incident was never forgotten, not by my wife nor by me and I think it was a little more intense for me because I felt the 'whatever" take over with me and steer us out of danger. It was like an unbelievable calm had over taken me and I was no longer scared and simply knew what I had to do and did it. To this day I think about it and although the guard rail coming at us is not as vivid as the 15 cars and some of the other things it still surfaces every once in a while and I know for sure it will never be forgotten. Again saving me for what ? I always kid my daughters that if something had happened they would not be here and this was not in the stars. But I had avoided a bullet again.
And now we switch to a car lot where cars that are shipped in by train are unloaded from the rail cars and parked until they are ready for shipping to new car dealers. My job as you can probably guess was to un-chain these cars, drive them off the flat bed trains and then park them. It was not the most brain intense job I ever had but the money was especially good and I was coming off an early bout of unemployment so I was very thankful for the money. I had been doing the job for months without incident when suddenly one day while driving down one the rows I was in a head on collision basically t-boning a car coming at an angle of 90 degrees to me. Since we were only doing about 25-30 MPH's death hardly was likely however I could have got a nasty bump on my head when I hit the dashboard or the windshield but again this is where we must bend the rules of science and logic for not only did I not hit the dash board or windshield, I DID NOT EVEN MOVE FROM MY SEAT ! I HONESTLY DID NOT EVEN FEEL THE INERTIA, IT WAS SURREAL AS I SIMPLY STAYED EXACTLY WHERE I WAS AND LOOKED AT THE FRONT END OF MY BRAND NEW, DAY OLD HONDA ACCORD, smashed to smithereens. Again I have gone over this incident a million times in my mind thinking I must be mistaken but no I did not budge an inch from that seat and of course I wore NO seat belt. It really did not make an immediate impact as I was worried about my job having just smashed a brand new car and it was only later when thinking about things that I realized I had not moved. How to explain it ? I no longer try.
And lastly but certainly not least we are now driving on the Trans Canada highway traveling along side I think the Fraser River (not exactly sure what river it was) and totally enjoying our first holiday as we are on our way to Victoria to see our sister-in-law. It is our first holiday together and we are having a ball. And now we get to a particularly harrowing part of the road where there is a steep mountain on my right and the canyon drops hundreds of feet below into the rushing river below. It is beautiful but scary as well and I have both hands of the wheel just a little nervous. And looming up ahead is a flat bed truck empty save for a few pieces of wood or so we thought. My wife's has recollections of rail road ties but I remember it as being an 8 by 8, regardless the outcome is the same. As we are traveling along the most harrowing part of this particular road all of a sudden off the back of the truck comes bounding this large piece of wood. The 8 x 8 is bounding end over end and it is coming straight at us. We are approaching it at about 65 MPH's and it bouncing uncontrollably towards us. It is another one of those moments frozen it tiem. Now again to this day I will never understand what stopped me from steering to the left to avoid it and plunge into the Fraser Canyon probably never to have been seen again. I honestly have no idea why I chose the course I did but I simply accelerated toward the bounding piece of wood and hell be damned I thought.
Now let's think about what an 8 x 8 bouncing down the highway at probably 50 MPH's and crashing into your windshield. I figure death would be a pretty good guess or how about just smashing your windshield to pieces and although not killing you destroying the car and ruining the rest of your holidays and maybe even you life or how about this, how about ... simply hitting your thick rubber front bumper, splintering into a zillion pieces and bouncing innocently into the canyon below. Well obviously teh "log" chose the latter and sometimes late a night when I see the 8 x 8 coming towards me in my dreams instead of accelerating I do the natural thing and swerve left and plummet into the canyon below ... as I awaken in a cold sweat I think back to that day and thank whoever or whatever .. we made the right decison ... or was it really mine to make ?
Anyway thanks for listening
Don Barone
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3 comments:
We had an experience like one of yours. Sandy was working as a cuirrier driver about two years back. He had a delivery to Kintyre, an area I'd never seen of Scotland, so I went with. I'd done that now and then, when the trips were to interesting places.
Anyway... the trip involved driving to Edinburgh to pick up a box then taking it across Scotland to a ferry depot. We had barely enough time, driving through the night to ctatch the ferry at 5:00 am, and it was POURING rain. Added to that the rural road is mostly single track winding through forests.
So we come around this tight corner in the middle of nowhere and suddenly skid on oil and rain on the road. We went straight for the left side metal barrier. I braced myself for impact, but about an inch from impact... we just spun away and went flying across the road... towards a cliff face. Once again a few seconds from impact we were flung into another spin and came to a dead stop... in the middle of the road.
Not a mark on the van (which was ours and our only means of income at that time). Not even a scratch.
I have no explanation for why we were suddenly flung away from the barrier (which could have taken out the entire left side of the van) and then fling away from the cliff (which would have been full front impact).
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Hello Donald. Very interesting topic. I've also had some very close shaves and near misses, but one of them really stands out for me, and just like you I've always wondered how I managed to survive - to escape death - to make it, because the laws of gravity, I think were definitely against me on that.
I was riding my 600cc "scrambler" bike with a friend on their farm in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He was a much more experienced rider than me, who participated in enduro and cross-country races, while I used my "monster cycle" for commuting and the odd light off-roading on weekends. His bike was a much lighter 250cc and he was racing ahead of me on a very narrow sandy dirt road. Of course, I had no problem keeping up, having the engine power (we were doing about 110km/ph) but the problem was going around tight bends and corners at that speed, which takes some serious skill and you need to know your motor cycle - and the road. Also, a 600cc thumper is a heavy-weight and much less "agile" for that kind of thing.
Unlike my friend I didn't know the farm paths at all and he disappeared over a hill in ahead of me - I assumed there was a straight the road at the top and I didn't reduce speed, but opened up throttle. To my shock there was almost a sheer drop - it was steep downhill section, but very short with a sharp twist - (at about 45 degrees) - the bend turned into a concrete bridge with no barriers with a rocky river bed a couple of metres below.
Gravel and loose stones would provide the only "grip" to power my bike through the corner and there wasn't even enough time to consider how I would slow down. At that moment I assumed automatically that I wouldn't make it - I vividly experienced the feeling of panic, fear and nausea all at the same in a split second. (I thought they were going to have to scrape me off rocks down below later that day...)
The next thing I knew, the bike's power band kicked when I hit that bend, the back tyre had found grip
and I was over and away! Across the bridge and up the other side of the hill. I slowed down and stopped to catch my breath - and I felt VERY ALIVE.
For me there has been other incidents too, but more in the line of decisions I almost took, which could have changed my life for the worse, but somehow I was guided to do the right or the better thing.
I do believe in guardian angels - its just very difficult to figure it out, but for me everything points towards it.
All the best - I'll be coming back to visit your blog again.
PS
I know who it was now. Who saved our lives that night.
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