There's Actually Been Lots of News

But I'm going to have to spread it out, since I don't have the time for a ginormous long post, and I'm sure most people would just want to skim it anyway. For today's update, let me just say that I got back from drill okay after a helluva long weekend sleeping never in the same place twice (fattred1's spare room, a hotel room in Terre Haute, and dsudis's couch). The weekend itself was pretty asinine, what with the company more or less treating me like I'm trying to reenlist, rather than trying to get out. They want to issue me new gear and get my uniforms surveyed (which means checked for ginormous holes and replaced) and have me run a PT test and stuff like that. Some things, like picking up gear for a personal weapon and filling out family contact information for when K Co. gets deployed again, I got to skip out on. But really all I wanted them to do was to say, "Hey, you're getting out in May. Sucks that you have to be here, so... why don't you just go take a nap and we'll wake you up if we really need you."

Oh well. I got to mess with the new guys a bit, and that's always fun. War stories definitely flowed like honey, and for some the embellishments have already gotten way out of hand. But we figured that was going to happen with them, anyway.

Otherwise, I woke up this morning with a fake nosebleed. For a long time, mostly I think since about sophomore year of college, I've been plagued with spontaneous nosebleeds. And I woke up at 1am this morning with the familiar feeling of something warm flowing out my face. So I hurriedly pinch it off, hop out of bed, and dash into the bathroom for some Kleenex(tm). And now, this morning, all I can remember thinking is, "The inevitable They didn't want me to finish my dream. They knew I was onto something so they gave me a nosebleed."

And when I finally turned on the lights in the bathroom? I discovered my nose wasn't bleeding at all. In fact, I couldn't find evidence that anything had been flowing out of my face.

I am so weird.

Why I Wear Boots

I was driving north to Charlevoix this morning from Grand Rapids. Left earlier, instead of stopping in Wyoming (a suburb of GR), and I would have missed it. Later, and I might have been a part of it, or been shunted off the freeway by the Sherriff's Deputies.

I hit total white-out just north of West River Drive, not even ten miles from my house. It went from perfect visibility to nothing in about fifteen, thirty seconds. I had just turned on the cruise control and was trying to decide if I should risk braking or try turning off the CC and slow down that way when the rear end of a minivan loomed out of the snow.

Decision made.

I hit the brakes, fishtailed, and went into the median sideways, grass flying up over my windshield. My exact words? "Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit..." I spun, nose pointed back toward the northbound side, unsure of how much of me stuck into the southbound lanes, worried about getting clobbered at 70+. So I pulled forward, thanking God for four wheel drive, and got up on the northbound shoulder. Traffic continued to whip by at 70+. I crept forward, trying to get up to speed, but noticing something was wrong and pulling back onto the shoulder, then into the grass entirely, afraid I might cause another accident.

Then I saw shapes looming from the snow, dark, motionless shapes across the northbound lanes. Cars whipped by, saw what I did, hit the brakes, then hit the already stopped cars. Cars went sideways. One car went up between two then hit the rear end of a third already turned across both lanes. A Chevy Trailblazer rolled. Most of this happened in a second or two, and I pulled a U-turn in the median and got on the southbound shoulder. I called 911.

They knew about the accident, but wanted to know about injuries. Seeing that traffic was getting stopped without incident on the northbound side, I jumped from my car and headed toward the scene, telling the 911 operator that they would need more than the three ambulances she said they were sending. A woman crawled from the driver's side of the Trailblazer. Ahead, I could see a jacknifed tractor-trailer beside another one with the trailer torn in two.

I headed around toward the left lane, where cars were trapped against the guardrail. I talked to one couple in a pickup truck, pinned between the rear end of a van and the rail. They were okay, but their first complaint was that their airbags had not deployed. They pointed out the family in the minivan in front of them, so I moved around to see them. A woman stood outside, crying, trying to hold onto two children, also crying. Her husband was sitting in the driver's seat, conscious and okay, trying to crawl out. "She's pregnant," he said.

I took the little boy from the pregnant woman, then took the little girl by the hand and talked to them. The husband finally crawled out and I offered him my cell phone, which he used to call someone and use a lot of obscenities. The couple in the pick-up truck offered to let the kids sit in the warm truck cab with them, so with the mom's okay, I hefted both in through the window. Further up, someone had hit their head badly, and they sat in their driver's seat, car pointed back south, a towel or something held to their forehead. I heard sirens and ran back south, where a State Police cruiser, a firetruck and an ambulance approached. I got hold of a firefighter and dragged her toward the most seriously injured person. The paramedics also made their way forward and got to that person first. Meanwhile, the firefighter pointed out that there was leaking gasoline, and she instructed me to have the drivers turn the cars off and pull the keys. I went into a couple of empty cars and did it myself.

One car's side-curtain airbags had deployed. A van had been completely mangled. The couple in the pick-up truck might have made it out with a cut knee and some fender scratches.

I offered a family a ride home, but when I got back to my car, I noticed that my trip through the median had pushed my right rear tire off the rim, and I couldn't get the wheel off to change it.

So I watched. I watched the cops and ambulances and road commission and news crews and Salvation Army and Red Cross come and go. I watched tow trucks haul off vehicle after annihilated vehicle. Parts of the big-rig trailer were loaded up onto flatbed trucks and hauled off. A Crystal Flash fuel tanker, which had blessedly stopped just short of the pile-up on the southbound side, drove by once they had cleared a lane on the southbound side. Papa John's delivered pizza (I kid you not). City buses from GR came up and picked up all the stranded motorists and delivered them back to the city.

In all, I think GR and Kent County is very much on the ball when it comes to disaster emergency response, and I'm happy to live in this area.

According to the news, one person died, 29 or more were injured, a couple of them critically. So, I pray, and I hope you do too.

And I thank God I'm okay.