My loaner car and I, along with the three children crammed into the back seat, were in the middle of a six-car pileup today in the 94/Hennepin Avenue tunnel, on my way to pick up Hannah’s and my weekly dairy orders. Well, actually, I was between two three-car pileups, although I certainly felt like part of both of them. The roads were slicking up with snow this morning and just as I rounded the bend in the tunnel I heard bang! and watched the van in front of me shudder as it made a second bang! with the vehicle in front of it.
It’s amazing how much one’s brain can take in at a moment like that. Foot to the floor, feel the anti-lock brakes pulsing; the car fishtail for an instant then straighten out, and the forward slide of the car, bleeding momentum, heading for the brake lights in front; come to rest a few inches away from that rear bumper — but it’s not over, the eyes flick up to the rearview mirror and see the traffic coming up behind, the ears pick up the squeal of someone else’s brakes; brace yourself for the moment of collision; what came out of my mouth as I cringed was an inane "Oh please help help" as I was sure we were going to be rear-ended hard and driven into the truck in front; watching the car behind swerve to the left (into traffic? risky!) to avoid ramming me, the car behind that colliding bang! and one more car behind that one bang! And the next thing I knew I was still, completely unscathed, not even a tap, with three cars piled up in front of me and three behind.
And me in a loaner I’d only driven once, at least if the previous day’s excursion counts as only one trip!
That was morning. Afternoon saw me driving back to the dealership in a snowstorm to get my minivan at three miles an hour — I know this because it took me an hour to go three miles — and then to the Y to get Oscar to his 6 pm swimming lesson. I left Plymouth at 2:30, stopped at the dealership for about twenty minutes, and got to the South Minneapolis Y at ten till six.
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