Deer in the Headlights

Two weekends ago, I was up in Chicago for a conference. Good conference. I'm convinced more than ever that I'll be off in a small town in the middle of nowhere next year. Which isn't all that different from where I am now, actually...

But, it was on the way back that the story got interesting. I'm cruising down the freeway, just about 25 miles from home. I'm in the left lane, since the right lane was a little bumpy. Nothing too extravagant. Maybe 72 or 73 mph. I had a couple grad students in the car with me heading back to school. We're actually having a pretty interesting chat about God and religion, when a deer comes wandering out from the median, which was sort of different.

Naturally, my first instinct was to recognize the problem, namely that there was a deer in the road that I was bearing down upon at high speed. My riders heard a somewhat quiet mumble of, "uh-oh." This is somewhat normal. What was much more interesting was my next thought. Instead of fear or anything like that, I went straight to annoyance and disgust, thinking, "Dammit."

Go figure. In a potentially life or death situation, my instincts gravitated toward annoyance at having to deal with a situation, even before survival. What does that say about me as a person? Yikes.

In any case, I start to turn into the right lane to avoid the deer, only to have it continue to cross the road. So, I had to break back left to go behind the deer. I saw the car heading into the ditch in the median, so I swerve back right, only to lose control of the car. What was scary was that I was headed for the start of a metal guardrail, which is a pretty solid object. Slamming into that would have been bad. I proceeded to take my car down into a ditch on the right side of the road.
The drop off from the road was pretty steep. If you didn't know where to look, you never would have seen the car. But somehow, I came in at just the right angle to go down the hill pretty easily. No trees, no rocks, or anything else. I ended up killing a lot of grass. And the car was pretty much OK. I even tried to back the car out, but the rains that had come made for slightly muddy ground, combining with really long, wet stalks of grass to keep me from just backing out myself. Instead, we lost a couple hours, waiting for a tow truck (AAA to the rescue again!) and chatting with the state trooper that made it out there (and almost drove by because he didn't see where it happened).

The best part? That was Sunday night. On Tuesday, I ended up driving out to Boston to help my brother pack up a bunch of stuff, right before he moved out to Hawaii. And I just made it back home last night. Brutal. But somehow, we're back, with a bunch of cool stuff courtesy of (not so) little bro, and with a car that's not any worse for the wear.

Forget semi-charmed. I think that I've got a fully charmed kind of life.

-Chairman