Last night I had a real taste of what an accident can feel like. It was quite slippery on the roads (as discovered by Vero and I slipping our way across the Hilton parking lot to the car) but in my mind, it did not immediately register that there was ice on the roads as soon as I got behind the wheel.
We headed towards the Highway 5 on ramp and there were a few cars waiting to turn left onto it. As I applied the brakes I caught a patch of black ice and the car was out of control.
I have to admit that my mind was on auto-pilot and not clearly thinking about what to do. I don’t recall thinking “I must apply intermittent pressure to the brakes”, I just did it. I started heading towards the median on my left but then realized that I would still rear-end the car in front of us. Without thinking about it, I tried swerving to the right to get into the two lanes of traffic and luckily the tires must have hit a good patch of pavement and it gripped and we made it out of the trap.
The only thing that was going through my mind at that point was that it was probably better to potentially hit a car on its side by swerving right than to hit some person from behind. I never had the time to look to see if there were cars to my right or not. We’re talking the span of this entire event was three seconds so some fast acting was in order.
My heart racing, we continued down the road and eventually turned back towards the on-ramp. I’ve never been in a close call like that before and it was quite scary. Now that I can reflect on it, I must say that driving experience subconsciously helped me out in this case as the habit of pumping the brakes on ice just inherently happened.
That was the end of our night.
The beginning of our night started off with me heading to Canadian Tire to get an oil change. After heading to Best Buy and then back to the waiting room at the store, I watched some TV, had a snooze and started wondering where the heck Vero was as she had said she would be there at 5:45 to pick me up to go visit her grandmother who was in town on a bus tour, staying at the Hilton at the Casino Lac-Leamy.
6:15 rolls around and she shows up and we head out to the Ramada Inn in Gatineau which is across from the Casino. Let it be noted that the only thing Vero’s grandmother told her was that she was staying at ‘the usual hotel’. Well, for the past five years, that usual hotel was the Ramada Inn. Unfortunately for us, when we arrived there, there was not Grandmother Cantin waiting there! We had the front desk guy call the Hilton and sure enough, they were over there.
Vero, her grandmother, uncle and I headed towards the Casino to go to the Banco buffet. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to this place for a work Christmas party and it’s a nice joint. The buffet was also excellent and we had some good times. I will be seeing her again shortly as Vero, Mike and I are heading back up North for Easter break. In fact, I found out a slew of us are heading up North, including Eric and Annie as well as Dana! Quite the crew!