A Near Miss
A Near Miss
A few years ago I had a near miss – in more ways than one. Though not quite a brush with death, it was an uncomfortable experience which could have ruined our travel plans. To set the scene, it was a summer’s day in the UK and my husband, baby daughter and I were heading down the motorway to visit some relatives before going to our London hotel. We were planning to get there early, enjoy the pool, have a leisurely meal and then catch a plane to the Caribbean the next morning. Things didn’t go quite according to plan.
Narrow Escape
As we were driving along, a truck came hurtling towards us. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but as it went past it caught a piece of wood with a tire and that piece of wood headed straight for our windshield. There wasn’t time to do anything, just to look at each other in shock and figure out what to do next. The wood hurtled towards us, smashing the windscreen. The car was covered in glass, though thankfully our baby daughter wasn’t hurt. Still in shock, we pulled into a nearby attraction – some sort of country house, I think – called the insurance company and realized that we couldn’t get anyone to fix the windscreen that day. Nor could we leave our damaged car in the airport parking lot for two weeks. What should we do?
Home Again
As it turned out, the only thing to do was to head back home – an hour and a half up the motorway – drop off my husband’s car, collect mine, and set off again. That’s what we did. By this time, all holiday spirit had vanished, though we were still grateful that no one was hurt. By the time we arrived at our hotel, it was dark. There was no visiting relatives, no swim and no leisurely dinner.
Lessons Learned
So what did I learn? Apart from being lucky to escape serious damage from the glass, this incident confirmed that our usual approach of leaving early and giving ourselves plenty of time to travel really paid off. Had the incident happened on the way to the airport the next morning, we would certainly have missed our flight. It also reminded me that even seasoned travelers can’t plan for everything, something Jeanne Dee would certainly agree with. What unusual experiences have got in the way of your travel plans?
(Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/)
Tags: travel, travel tales
December 4th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I remember it well; it struck the window and the car frame on my side. A little left and a large headache would have followed.
December 4th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I have been lucky with travel plans. Not too many hiccups, though I try to roll with it when they happen.
I remember a story once years ago from tv news. A flat square of sheet metal somehow came loose from the side of a semi truck. A small kid in the front passenger seat of the car behind the truck saw it coming like a vertical frisbee and ducked. He had only been slightly nicked by the sheet metal.
The sheet looked to be about 12″ x 12″ square. It was embedded halfway through the front seat.
December 4th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Wow – that really was a near miss, James. That’s probably been the closest shave I’ve had while driving, though there have been other hairy travel experiences from time to time.