Mine happened just recently, actually, just a couple weeks ago.
I'm not normally superstitious, but I'm starting to believe in omens, particularly when it comes to a handful of minor, bad events leading into something truly terrible.
So, I'm driving from Alaska down to the lower 48, with some vacation time in Vancouver. First day of travel, Sunday, no problems are had, a good day all around. Monday happens, and it happens in a big way.
First, I'm late getting on the road, which by itself isn't bad, except I soon remember that I forgot to check out of my room after having been on the road for a good 15 minutes. Turn my happy ass around, check out, get back on the road.
Okay, not too bad, except this is the Yukon I'm in, a place with roads that range from tolerable to god-*&^%ing-awful.
Drive drive drive gas drive drive drive gas drive drive. Stop at a place because I desperately needed to use the bathroom, the guy there is desperate for business and company, asks if I want lunch, since the place is also a short-order restaurant. I order some chili to go, assuming it'll be some kind of tub or styrofoam box. He either didn't hear the "to go" bit or he just didn't care, because I get a ceramic bowl of chili. Okay, not a huge waste of my time. I sit down and eat while watching a Canadian comedy show. Canadian comedy shows are different from US comedy, and that's all I'll say about that. I eat up and go on my merry way. I go past a major highway junction, get gas, and come back, and that's when it happened.
I'd like to take a second to give everyone here an extremely important safety tip: When you're driving at highway speeds for hours on end, it can distort your sense of speed. If you think it feels like you've slowed down enough to safely make a turn, slow down more, because you're probably going almost twice as fast as you should be.
The road was completely covered in white ice, which is like regular ice, except made by compacting snow until it's solid. I went to make the turn, and my car didn't turn. Well, it sorta turned, rather, just enough that it didn't stay on the road. No, it went into a snowbank. A very tall snowbank with giant head-crushing chunks of white ice.
Immediately after the impact, and my car had become still, I assessed the situation. Car's running fine, I'm undamaged, everything in my car is a bit shaken up but in its place. Okay, that's a good start. I turn off my car and get out. Oh dear, that's the lower front-end of my car shredded a bit. I get down to inspect the underside as best I could for obvious fluid leaks, and fortunately, all those inner workings appear to be fine. Very cool. I walk around the car to look for more damage, and I notice that the front right tire has come off the wheel. Spiffy.
I try to call 911 for the first time in my life. Zero service. But hark, do mine ears decieve me? 'Tis a vehicle in the distance, and it appears to be approaching! Sure enough, a very nice trucker comes up. Salt of the Earth, these folks. He can't take me anywhere, as he has his own schedule to keep - 1000% understandable, he's got a job to do - but he does radio for a tow truck. Fast-forward an hour and some, and the tow truck shows up, winches my car onto the bed, and we mosey on back to their shop. The guy - his name was Bee Jay, incidentally - puts the tire back on, zip-ties some of the loose cables and hoses in place, and sends me on my way, after I'd paid Bee Jay nearly $300 for the tow, tire repair, and time spent in the shop. Tire repair. You guys have no idea how funny that is yet.
I go back to travelling on the Yukon's terrible, terrible roads. Terrible roads that betrayed me yet again only an hour after my first fuck-up. I go to take a curve at a sensible speed. Not quite sensible enough. Car fish-tails one way, I try to hold it, over-correct, fish-tail fish-tail fish-tail BIG SPIN SLAM goes the ass end of my car into a convenient snow bank! This snow bank, mercifully, slows my car enough that I'm able to finally get it under control and pointed in the right direction. I stop and inspect. No damage, but the back of my car is now caked in snow and crud. Didn't care, kept driving.
My car has a tire pressure monitor, and I've never been so damn happy to have one. A couple hours after I got back on the road my car told me that the pressure in both right tires, the tires that took the brunt of the impact, was steadily going down. Spiffy. I pulled over in a nearly desolate town and pulled out the emergency tire sealant that came with my car. My 2007 car. The best-by-November-2010 sealant. Whatever. So I use it as best I know how and air up my tires with my little air compressor and continue. Folks, having a little air compressor powered by your car's power adaptor is one of the best things you can do. No go, still leaking. It literally got to the point where I had to stop every 20-25 minutes to spend another 15 minutes putting air into the one tire. I'm essentially limping to the next town. I finally checked into a motor inn at about 9:30, paid the $125 for a room that wasn't worth $80, and that was the single worst day of my life.
Actually, there's a small follow-up. The next day I went and bought some Slime, a commercially available tire sealant. I used it, annnnd... still a no go. So I get in contact with a local mechanic, and after following him out to his shop, he takes off the wheels and tires to look for any problems.
It turns out that, this whole time, the tire leaks were caused not by defects in the tires or the rims themselves.
No, the problem was caused by Bee Jay being an incompetent boob. See, something that happened when my car slammed into that first snow bank was some snow got wedged between the tire and the rim, creating a tiny gap through which the air could escape. Either through incompetence, complacency, or a desire to get my ass out of his place, Bee Jay did not either notice or bother to correct these deficiencies.
So this new guy, Chris, proceeds to clean off all the snow as well all the other grime on the rims, wipes out the tires real good to get rid of excess tire sealant, airs up my tires and puts them back on. The car now runs just as well as it did when I started my journey.
Was the initial collision bad? Not really, although further evaluation of the damage by an insurance agent puts the initial repair estimate at some $3500. The car is perfectly drivable, I'm capable of finishing the journey, and as I said, I'm perfectly safe, and so is all the stuff inside.
No, I think the worst part of it was the leaking tires. All that other stuff was a kick in the joy department, sure, but having leaking tires on top of it was like a strong flick, just to make sure I stayed down.
