0.1% Down, Another 639.33 Miles to Go

Unfortunately the pictures don't do it much justice (since I thought it looked worse), but I'll give myself some credit for taking pictures after just crashing in our family's car, and also considering the hour. Go me. (Potentially) long story short: All of 300 yards onto the freeway headed to my parents house for Christmas, with my father at the wheel (as he had offered to drive down with Cecilia and I (I sent Maria and Becky on a plane the night before)), the car spun out of control and we ended up sliding backwards into the end of the guard rail. Everyone was alright. One tow truck, two police officers, and an hour or so later, we took the car to a body shop. After that we borrowed my grandmother's car to finish our drive. Quite the way to start a trip. The rest of the way there (and back) were thankfully uneventful. Cecilia's one complaint about the accident was that "somebody just woke [her] up with that loud bang". Only moments before it happened I told her she should go to sleep, since it was going to be a long drive. Obviously there were greater powers at work that morning, towards whom we are grateful for our safety, all things considered. Here are some pictures from earlier today when I stopped by to look things over:

Some brief descriptions:

1. The bar on which the car was resting, and a contributing reason to why we couldn't just drive away (the car was able to drive to the shop, despite the trunk being impossible to open, as well as the back right door).
2. I thought this was fun to see – the force from our car ripped right through this wood support beam.
3. The rest of the bumper. Some was put in the car when it was towed, but apparently we decided to donate our bumper to the freeway. Maybe later I'll go pick it up and throw it away.

Obviously not the best experience to have, and certainly a crappy way to start a Christmas vacation, but there are certainly some small, but notable benefits from this: the bumper already had a rip in it from a time when a tire stripped itself on the freeway and went flying off at 70mph. Sweet, a better reason to get a new bumper now. Our back left tail light had a hole in it. It wasn't a safety hazard or anything, since it was maybe the size of a quarter, and we kept passing safety inspections… but now we'll get a new one. Don't really have anything else to share about this… just wanted to make sure I blogged about it. Done.