While I do not mean to upstage the erudite and charming Mr. McClure, I have a rather major story. I know I'll end up telling all of you this eventually, and to be perfectly honest I'd rather do it just once.

Originally I intended to write you a nice entry about the film festival I went to over the weekend, how the Denver Post published my letter to the editor (about that article on my school I posted last week), and my detour through Telluride on the way back (complete with photo of me sipping from an "I <3 Telluride" mug). And I still may do that at some point. But the whole trip was completely colored by what happened to us (my best friend and I) on our way back.

We had been driving all day Sunday, and by 9:30 or so at night we were almost home. We were driving through a mountain pass about an hour and half south of Denver when we hit a patch of ice and started skidding into the opposite lane. My friend, who was the one driving at that point, jerked the wheel back the other way and we slid right off the side of the road. The car slammed sideways into an embankment of snow and then flipped into the air. It rolled twice with us inside and landed upside down in a ditch.

Remarkably, we were both totally uninjured, save a few minor glass cuts and some whiplash. I was hanging from my seatbelt (if that's not an effective PSA for seat belt use, I don't know what is), so my friend unbuckled me and we started looking through the shattered car for a cell phone to call for help. When we couldn't find one, I started freaking out and saying that no one would find us and all of this nonsense that was so unreasonable that in retrospect I can't quite understand how I could have even believed myself. But anyway, we both climbed out her window, which was completely shattered through. There were about four feet of snow on the ground and I had lost my shoes somehow in the crash, but I barely noticed that as we climbed up the hill to the road about 15 feet away. A car had already stopped and he was calling 911. He let us sit in his car until the police came.

The rest of the night was pretty terrible, as you might imagine. I was basically crying inconsolably for an hour and a half while cops and paramedics and my parents asked me questions about what had happened. I frequently realize in situations of distress that my crisis-reaction stills are not top notch. This was yet another example. Anyway, because I was "injured" (the small cut on my forehead bled all over my face and looked far worse than it really was), my friend was charged with reckless driving and has to go to court. She also lost her license because she already has some points on it for parking/speeding tickets. My mom's car, which we were driving, was totally destroyed.

All that said, it's mostly just remarkable that we lived at all. I'm pretty sure it was only because we landed in such heavy snow and because we were both wearing our seatbelts. It could have so easily been much, much worse. There were some other strange things as well. We had been listening to my ipod through a tape adapter (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco. i'll probably never want to listen to that album again. a shame, since it's one of my favorites) and when we crashed it was thrown ten feet out of the car, but landed softly and when I picked it up later had simply paused on the last song we were listening to. A bottle of beer we were given at the film festival (long story) made it through unbroken and my laptop, which was in my backpack, sailed over the car somehow, but is still in working condition.

That's all peripheral, but I've been marveling over it just because the entire incident seems so unreal. I walked away unhurt, with all of my possessions intact. Logically, that doesn't happen when your car rolls over with you inside. What can I say except that it was the strangest (and also most terrifying) experience of my life. Sort of a boring conclusion, but it's true.

Anyway, if I owe you a phone call, it'll probably be a while before I get around to it because my cell phone is in a police station in the small town near where this all happened and I'm not sure when I'm going to get down there to pick it up. Yeah.

That's about it. That's a draining story to tell, even via blog, so I'm off to sleep now.
Good night.