Death was near...

February 14th, 2008 4:01 p.m.
Death was near
We got everything packed up last night and moved out of our house in San Antonio and arrived in Austin at12:30 this morning. Uncle James and Aunt Chelsea fixed us a wonderful breakfast and we hit the road. At about 1 1:10, on I-35 we were traveling in the left lane in a construction zone south of Salado when a 4x4 piece of wood rolled into our lane. We were in the left lane and a semi was in the right lane. Sarah, who was driving, had no choice but to hit the piece of wood dead-on at 70 mph. The blow ruptured both left-side tires, bent both rims and nearly sheered off the front spindle. Sarah was able to coax the fan into the right lane and we kept going for about ¼ mile trying to find an exit but to no avail: this stretch of I-35 has no exits and retaining walls on each side of the highway. There was not a shoulder for us to pull-off on. As we looked back, Sarah saw two semi’s that were behind us in a cloud of smoke. Both of the semis’s blocked the traffic, so we found ourselves alone on I-35. Thankfully, we came out just fine, injury- wise. The drivers behind us were not so lucky. I dialed 911 while we were still moving and, not too long after we stopped emergency vehicles were all over the place. We saw a care-flight helicopter and many ambulances: at the sight of the first ambulance we stopped-down for some prayer time.

As soon as we stopped and realized that there was no moving traffic behind us, Sarah called our insurance company while I looked to see how bad the damage was. Amazingly, we had zero body-damage but our tires and rims were destroyed.

About an hour later our tow-truck came and we were towed to the Mac Haik Dodge dealership in Temple, Texas. The dealership was fantastic: it was like we had our own pit crew! While we were waiting for the repairs to be finished two gracious DPS officers found us and we gave our information about the accident. We inquired about the accident and were told that no one had died, thank God (literally).

$777 dollars lighter and eight hours later, we were on our way back to Dallas.