What are the odds?

What are the odds?

I happen to be driving down the freeway during one of the worst storms of the year yesterday. Hail, at least the size of marbles, starts pelting my car and is deafening inside. I can't see a thing in front of me and everybody is stopped around me (except for the daring guy in the truck behind me who zig zags around everybody and takes off). My child starts to scream because of the noise. It finally lifts up a bit, enough to increase the speed and continue on my way on the what looks like snow packed freeway. I'm a half mile away from my exit practically under a bridge when traffic comes to a halt again. No one is moving. Time ticks away...it continues raining and because of all the rain, water starts to rise right where I'm at...and not just from the rain but the drains under the bridge have water spewing out of them filling up the "dip" I'm in even faster because of the overload of water . I'm able to move out a little bit due to a tiny bit of movement of cars but none the less, we are still stalled. I get a little nervous thinking, "Is it possible for water to come through my doors?" but dismissing the idea since we should be moving soon, right?

Apparently there were some power lines that were live and sparking that were torn down from the storm right over the freeway right where my exit was. Everyone was completely stuck. I ended up sitting on the freeway for almost 2 hours and yes, my car did fill with water. I thought I was fine until I looked back and saw that there was 2 inches of water on the ground in my backseat area. "What in the world? How did that get there?" since no water was coming through the doors. Apparently, water can seep through the bottom of my car. To make this long story short, my car filled up with water up to the doors. I started to get really nervous when my oil light and check engine light came on. The thoughts of water getting into my engine made me really nervous!

The big positives of the situation?

• People around me were really nice. They started honking to get cars to move up a little bit which helped the water go down about an inch and made my check engine light go off. When another lane started to move before mine, they let me go first to try to get me out of the water.
• James was an angel! He actually fell asleep for the first hour of our stop and then hardly fussed for the next hour (which is truly a miracle since he hates his carseat). Crying babies just don't help my stress level.
• I had my cell phone so I was able to get updates of what was going on a mile in front of me. I was able to make calls to arrange the change of plans of my evening (I had to miss a presidency meeting). Plus, talking to family helped pass the time and ease fears...it just helps to talk things out.
• I was even able to laugh in the middle of the situation. What else could I do? I was completely stuck with no where to go.
• I have AMAZING family that take care of me! After I got off the freeway, I was able to get to my parents where they have a vacuum that sucks up water to try to "clean up" my car. They also have a big garage where we could leave the car with doors open to dry out (since we don't have a garage, I don't trust our neighborhood to just leave my car with open doors or windows.)

What a funny experience for me. Thankfully, I was also able to reach Phil at school to tell him what I was doing to our car while he was gone! I'm so glad everything worked out fine. It could have been so much worse!!

Randy vacuumming out the car

James having fun

A smile for the camera from Steve


Everybody hard at work