Christmas Day 2006

I have mixed feelings and reservations about posting this kind of stuff here...I don't want to appear to be fishing for sympathy. However, if this had happened to any of my friends or family, I'd want to know what happened.

My wife and I were lucky enough to have survived a pretty horrible car accident Christmas day. We had traveled about 3 1/2 hours south to Medford for Christmas. My parents live there along with my brother and his family.

We had to start heading back home Christmas day because we both had to be back to Salem for work. If you live in the Pacific NW you know that the last few days we've been having crazy torrential downpour. It has been raining nonstop for days in most of Oregon. Because of the rain we'd left in plenty of time to get home at a decent hour if we took it nice and slow. I was driving. I had slowed down to 50 - 55 mph and was being passed by jokers who didn't take the standing water on the road seriously. I was in the left lane at one point, and was returning to the right lane and we began to hydroplane. The back end of the car swung around, and we hit the embankment on the right side of the highway and began rolling, numerous times. We ended up stopping upside down. Some passing motorists stopped and cut us out of our seatbelts, yes we were both wearing seatbelts, and we both crawled out of our own accord. Michelle, my wife, had some serious contusions on her head, suffered a concussion and her left arm was ripped up pretty bad. I have some lacerations on the top of my head, my right hand is torn up pretty bad too. The doctor called it 'road rash.' And my back is killing me. We were both ambulanced to a nearby hospital, sewn up and released. We spent a day or so recuperating at my parent's house, and we're now back home in Salem.

We feel lucky to be alive, and we thank God that we are. We know how fortunate we are and how much worse it definitely could have been.

Thought I'd share, 2007 can NOT come quickly enough for us!