OK, this really isn't funny anymore. My wife and I drove from St Louis to KC this past weekend to attend a Chrysler meet and try our hand for the first time showing our car. We had a great time and this morning we headed east on 70 to head back home. The drive turned out to be unexpectedly eventful. As predicted, it was raining when we left, but it didn't get seriously heavy until we were about an hour down the highway. Once the heavy rain hit and visibility started to drop, I watched the Nissan just ahead of me in the left lane lose traction and spin around backwards as he slid into the median. When he left the pavement he kicked up a bunch of loose rocks that bounced into the highway and pelted my car in front and on both sides.
I pulled off into the median just ahead and ran back to check on him. Apparently, after I passed him his car went through the cable median barrier backwards and hit an oncoming Suburban towing a trailer with a farm tractor. He's lucky the semi just behind the Suburban was carrying an empty trailer and was able to dodge the accident. Fortunately, everyone seemed to come out of it without any serious injuries. The guy driving the Nissan Sentra appeared to only had some serious rash from where his shoulder harness bit into him and I'm sure the rest of his body will be plenty sore for awhile. Oh yeah, and he has to find another way home to Georgia.
With all the rain I can't be sure how much damage my car got in the way of rock dings and such, but I can see several places where rocks bit through the paint on the bumper, hood, front fenders, and the driver's door. This will make the third not-at-fault insurance claim I'll have had in 2 months. For anyone who hasn't seen my other posts here about this, the first two were storm damage, first in July from a tree limb that fell in the storms that hit St Louis, then 2 days after it came back from the body shop freshly repaired and with a full repaint another storm passed through and I woke up the next morning to find a few hail dents in the roof. That claim is still pending. I'm sure the body shop will be thrilled when I show up yet again.
While I was stopped in the median with two tires barely on the pavement (there was a narrow shoulder on the right side with a guard rail along that section so that option wasn't any better) a trooper came over to take a report and told me to move my car further off the road. I told him I was worried about getting stuck, but he insisted. Sure enough, when it came time to leave when I tried to move the car it started sliding sideways toward the cable in the median. I called AAA for a tow and when someone finally showed up, the assistant in the truck jumped out and started to hook a chain under the front of the car. I told him I didn't want him to tear up by bodywork by pulling up on the chain, so he looked under the back of the car and couldn't find a quick solution there. Then the fat guy (looked to be over 400 lbs) sitting in the truck told me "We're not going to f$#k around with this anymore." I asked if he was just going to leave me there and he said he was, after less than 2 minutes of trying to figure something out. The driver never even got out of the truck. Just to top thing off, it was still pouring rain. For anyone who's curious, the tow truck was from Betty's Towing from a truck stop in Saline County, with a jerk of a driver who was happy to tell me his name was Tony.
When I called back to AAA they said it was pretty busy because of the bad weather, but they started searching for another truck that would come get me out. Awhile later a kind soldier traveling in the opposite direction stopped to see if he could help, but when he pulled off the road in his 4x4 he slid into the median cable on the opposite side and broke his tail-light. After he saw we were safe and another truck was supposedly on the way, he left. More than an hour later, about 2.5 hours after we stopped, I finally decided to try making my own gravel road back to the pavement using the rocks in the median. I guess I'm a little slow, I should have thought of that a long time earlier. I made a path in front of each tire a few feet at a time until I made it back onto the highway.
We left KC about 9:45 and got home at 6:15. I must admit, I'm starting to wonder if someone upstairs thinks I need to learn a lesson somewhere along the line.
