Driving from Davidson to Montreat on I-40 on Friday afternoon I ran into a severe rainstorm. I was around Marion, NC when the rain was coming down so hard I could hardly see the road. Others had slowed down and so did I. Some pulled off the road onto the shoulder. I find that not a very comfortable idea since it is then really hard to get back on the road so I kept going. Besides the rain, the wind was blowing and as I was getting near Old Fort I noticed leaves blowing horizontally across the road ahead of me. Then I saw a tree up on the right was falling down across the road and I had little time to do anything except try to stop and hope the cars behind me would slow down and not plow into me! I stopped right up against the tree. I was not rear ended but I was stuck in the right lane with cars coming around me on the left. I was shaken up and didn't want to do anything but sit there. I had braked hard and things in the car had "shifted" forward but all seemed well. The car wasn't damaged as far as I could see and I was ok. The air bags didn't deploy. Whew! I sat there for a few minutes and then started looking behind me for a chance to get into the lane of traffic moving through. Finally someone must have seen my situation and let me in. By then the rain had lightened up and it felt safe to move on and get to my destination ASAP. I didn't even think about making a picture of my view of the tree and the road but trust me there was a tree that was all the way across I-40. The cars had to go off the shoulder to get around it. I assume someone let the highway patrol know of the problem. I felt like my job was to get home.
I was reminded of an incident about nine years ago when I was driving from Davidson to our son's house in Pittsboro, NC. In Siler City on Highway 70 I encountered a log truck heading in the opposite direction. It came up from the other highway at an intersection and the logs shifted and spilled out across the road. There were these huge logs rolling toward me! All I could do was stop and hope they didn't hit too hard. I was not injured but the SUV I was driving was declared a total loss by the insurance company. At least one other vehicle was severely damaged.
So, both times I was not injured and the vehicles held up although in the eyes of the insurance company one of them was damaged severely. I am thankful that both of these SUV's provided me with protection. I can only imagine that if I had been in a car like my beloved Honda Civic or my current Ford Fusion I might not have come through so well. I try not do dwell on the "what ifs" but situations like this do make me think about wanting to drive the sturdiest car I can find.
I also think about what amazing things trees are. They can be massive! I think the one that fell in front of me this past Friday was very tall but not so large in circumference. The ones on the log truck nine years ago were very big. They had been harvested to become lumber for construction projects I imagine. Anyway, I have worked on some projects to try to preserve the tree canopy so I would hope trees might like me and want to keep me around but that's probably a pretty naive idea. You just never know what's going to happen.
