In the moments following the accident a still quiet permeated the confines of the Jeep, and the simplest thoughts of my life floated through my mind providing clarity in the midst of a foggy shock. Life is about people…I worry about too many things….Life is a gift….This car has no real value to me…If I walked away from this accident with nothing more than my life and my brother’s life then I am an incredibly blessed individual. These are things that I was thinking as the reality of the situation became apparent. Jeff and I were trapped in the Jeep, which was laying on it’s driver’s side completely perpendicular to the ground.

Reflection put on pause, we searched for ways to extricate ourselves from the car. Given the angle of the car, our limited ability to move, and the fact that the car was filled to capacity with boxes, the outlook seemed impossible. My frame of my mind was a mashup of franticness, panic, claustrophobia, and determination. We were going to get out and I wasn’t going to let fear impinge upon our livelihood. My adrenaline was pumping so excessively that I’ve never felt more alive (even though I had been so close to death). I repeatedly tried opening the passenger side door, but my efforts were futile. Trying to push open a door that has been reconfigured and reshaped was a pointless exercise. Given that I was being held upright by my seatbelt, I had no support or strength to pull from and determination alone wasn’t going to do the trick (in fact even at the wrecking yard, upright, the passenger side door would not budge an inch).

As Jeff and I were trying to think our way out of the Jeep, we heard a voice outside the car yelling, “Can anyone hear me?” We yelled back, “Yes. Yes. We can hear you.” The voice again, “Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me.” We both screamed, “Yes,” and this time the man behind the voice was able to ascertain that we could in fact hear him. He approached the back side of the car and asked if we could try and open or at least unlock the doors. I already knew the front passenger side door was not an option, so I propelled myself slightly backwards to try and unlock and open the back door. That too was a futile endeavor. After several tries the man outside the car, who now seemed to have a few other voices along side him, managed to climb on top of the car and wrench open the back door. He then proceeded to remove several of the books that were in between me and the back door. After a few minutes, with my brother’s help, I was able to recline the front seat and use it as a stool to boost me high enough to try and climb out of the Jeep. Once I reentered the world beyond the Jeep I saw several men, truck drivers, who were standing there waiting to help pull me to safety, which they did. In the process, however, one of my black leather ballet flats slipped off my foot. By the time I made it back on solid ground I was standing jacket-less and one-legged in snow and ice-covored grass while my naked left foot started to freeze. Jeff followed suit shortly thereafter, although he managed to make it out with both shoes on.

Back on the ground we starred in awe at our surroundings: a completely destroyed Jeep, engine parts littered through out the median, truck drivers staring back at us, and another car that must have tried to avoid the flailing Jeep on it’s spiral out of control. After checking to make sure that we were alright, the men ran over to check on the other vehicle and Jeff and I were left with each other, our thoughts, and the silent Jeep. This is when I grasped, for the first time, the real magnitude of the situation. We had just flipped several times in the Jeep. We were rescued by truck drivers. The car was totaled. We were stranded somewhere in New Mexico. All of these things were very real to me, but nothing was more poignant then the fact that Jeff and I were alive. The tears streamed down my face and I kept repeating while bombarding with him scared and frightened hugs,”I love you so much. I don’t car about the car, all I care about is you.” But Jeff was in shock too. He seemed to be struggling with competing emotions, happiness to be alive, guilt because he was the driver, and compassion for the people in the other car. But he did manage to give me one of his shoes so that I wouldn’t have to walk around with one foot in the snow. One of the truck drivers also lent me his nice warm jacket, which was much appreciated as the adrenaline was starting to wear off and the cold was starting to pierce my tough, but only slightly clad, exterior.

We never learned the whole story about the other vehicle so I have no idea what happened or how they ended up on the side of the road with us, but I do know they are all okay too.

When the police and the ambulances showed up, Jeff and I were directed to get checked out by the paramedics and give our account of what had happened. The woman who then proceeded to check for injuries quickly became our friend in a crisis. She was amazing. Her eyes were kind, her voice was calm and soothing, her demeanor was motherly, and her heart was pure gold. She was/is everything that you could ever need in scary situations. She didn’t offer false promises or harsh lecture, she simply made herself available to us as a friend and a paramedic. We told her our story about traveling across country and about having all of our stuff in the car and no where to go or no way to get home. We told her everything because she was person we knew we could trust. She informed us of the typical procedure – a wrecking/towing company would be called, they would secure our stuff and tow the car, and we could call them in the morning. She also offered to have her and her partner drive us (at not expense to us) to a hotel in the town near the wrecking/towing company, Tucumcari, New Mexico. To think that an ambulance would, free of charge, drive us 20 miles to the nearest town…well it meant the world to me because I know that in this day and age that a free trip in an ambulance is a borderline miracle.

There are many more acts of kindness to share and I will do so shortly, but for now I will leave you with Jeff and I checking in to the Holiday Inn Express in Tucumcari, New Mexico with no clothes, no luggage, no cell phone, no nothing.

And in case you were wondering…

Let me reverse several miles and describe the events leading up to this moment of clarity. Jeff and I were in our 12th hour of driving for the day and we had just crossed the border between Texas and New Mexico. The conditions had been pretty intolerable for the past hour or so with snow flurries that completely eradicated any and all visibility. Jeff was driving cautiously, but I was definitely bordering on unease. I said a quick prayer to God and asked that he help us make it the last 250 miles to Albuquerque safely.

Wait a second. Brake. Hard. Turn around with me and notice this strange and eerie picture of pure irony. Somewhere in Oklahoma I was trying to take pictures of the roadside scenery, but the best of my efforts were being thwarted by the rain, clouds, dirty windshield, and poor lighting. Instead of capturing nature, I shot something more ominous – the warning sign on the passenger side visor. Take a look…

This picture was taken around 4:30pm and my accident was around 7:00pm. Who knows what I was thinking when I took this, but there is certainty and truth in the fact that I was completely unaware of what was to befall me very shortly.

Speeding up to the minutes before the accident, if you were to observe the scene as a third-party you would have seen a quirky cute guy with the hood of his blue sweatshirt pulled over his head and his white ball cap on top of the hood. You would have also seen a visibly exhausted young woman slightly reclined and fidgeting with her brother’s iPhone to avoid having to visually confront the vicious snow and monstrous trucks right outside the front windshield. You would have watched as the Jeep, awkward on the road in the same manner as a teenager is awkward in his/her own skin, creeped over to the left hand lane to pass a truck in the right hand lane. You might have been proud of the Jeep for showing such bold courage in times that usually call for fear, or you might have felt trepidation and a sense of foreboding doom. A few seconds later, you would have seen the Jeep inching back to the right hand lane and meeting an icy demon on the way. As the Jeep skidded on the ice, you would have seen the young man try to steer the car to the left and lightly tap on the brakes. You, no doubt, would have noticed that despite his best efforts the Jeep rotated 240 degrees to face traffic as it careened into the ice-covered grassy medium and flip, practically end over end, at least two complete times, spewing engine parts in the process, before it stopped abruptly on its side.

But you weren’t inside the vehicle or the passengers’ head, so you couldn’t possibly know that while the car was flipping and the bang of the side of the car hitting the ground was followed by the jolt of the top of the car smashing into the ground, only to be repeated at least 6 more times; you couldn’t possibly know that all the while the people inside were surviving. I was there. I know.

When it became glaringly clear that the car was going to flip, the iPhone slipped out of my hands and all that passed through my mind was the need to protect myself, to wrap my arms around my head and brace myself for something nearing death. I was ready to play black jack with the devil. I was ready to lose the battle of life and win the war of something more eternal, but God had other plans. He wanted me alive and he sent his angels, in the form of truck drivers, to rescue my brother and I from the remains of the green Jeep. But before their arrival, the trivial matters that normally consume me were no where to be found; in their place were the simplest and purist thoughts of my entire life.

Life is about people.

In a future entry I’ll share how Jeff and I were extricated from the deformed Jeep and the ensuing events that helped me redefine the very definition of my own life.

I’ve subdivided this 3,000 mile trek back to San Diego into 600 mile per day chunks. Today I traversed through 6 states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts , Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania), made 3 stops for gas and snacks, received 2 citations, and got lost 1 time. Along the way I used Jott to convert my voice into text to send micro-blog posts to twitter, and I used utterz to capture longer audio moments that I wanted to share on this blog and with the utterz community.

Given all my social activity, it was no surprise (but it was pleasant) to finally check into my hotel room and find comments, replies, and tweets from fellow media snackers. I’m having a blast sharing my trip and can’t wait to continue with more updates tomorrow.

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