We departed from Wisconsin on Sunday the 4th and stayed the night in Minnesota, near the border of North Dakota. The next day we drove into North Dakota and worked our way towards Standing Rock. We were about 30 miles away in St. Anthony when the accident happened. The weather had only called for a little snow that day. Well it turned into a blizzard with whiteout conditions, and very slick roads.
We had 20+mph winds
We had two route options to take, we chose the longer one in order to avoid the police barricade on 1806. I didn’t like it, I remember feeling unease about our route. If you know me well, you are aware that I was brought up Christian, we stopped going to church when I was still fairly young and my parents never pushed religion, they wanted us to choose for ourselves. I chose agnosticism for a long time, then returned to spirituality during my divorce and now I don’t follow any one religion but do feel more connected spiritually. I go into that to say, I prayed when we got on that road. I asked our Guardian Angels to please watch over us and keep us safe. I don’t know if that made a difference in the outcome but it sure made me feel better and I am extremely grateful for how it did turn out. Prior to the accident I mentioned to Matthew the 'trick’ when you are going to have a collision - to relax. It is a fact that in an accident those that are drunk, or unaware the accident is about to occur fair better than those that tense up. He conveyed that when fishtailing you try to correct but if you start to spin and are past the point of recovery you should just stop trying and allow the car to stop on it’s own. We were driving behind a white SUV(shown in photo above), Matthew was keeping us a good distance from it but when they hit their brakes he lightly tapped the brake which started the fishtailing that lead to the car spinning 180 degrees, then sliding off the road into a ditch, rolling on the passenger side and settling on the roof.
:-(
We weren’t going very fast, perhaps that is why it felt like we were going in slow motion. He tried to correct, until we started to spin, I heard him say, “Relax, just relax”. This caused me to take a steady breath and release any tension in my body. I thought that was what he meant by relax. Well, apparently he wasn’t talking to me, he was telling himself to relax and not continue to try to correct now that we were spinning. When the car settled I felt like I was in a movie and had to move quickly before the car either exploded or started to crush us... neither of those things happened but the feeling caused me to immediately undo my seat belt, open my door and get the hell out. Matthew couldn’t get out on his side and had to crawl out on my side, we grabbed warm things, assessed we were both uninjured and called a towing company. I asked if we should call the cops but he figured getting towed took precedence. Ultimately while I was wrapping up with the towing company a Morton County Sheriff showed up and let us in his car. It was a first for us to be in the back of a cop car. It reminded me of a NYC cab, with the plastic panel separating you from the driver... except he was armed. Officer Bob was what you hope an officer is. He was friendly, helpful and got us to a safe warm place before leaving. He took us to Rusty’s Saloon, to wait for our tow truck. That took about 6 hours. We spent our time drinking beer, getting something to eat and listening to a lot of country music and local gossip. We ended up calling a different tow company after waiting 2 hours because they were backed up and didn’t know when they would get to us. The guy that finally came out took about half an hour longer than he thought he would because he drove so slow. We could care less of course. I was just happy he arrived at all. He was the last guy from his job out towing people, he got the short string that night because he was the one on call. We thanked him profusely. He was also a very friendly guy and it was a pleasant, slow ride to Bismarck.
While he was flipping our truck back over and loading it up I started making calls into town to get a hotel room. I didn’t do it earlier... I forget why but we both agree it was Matthews fault. Anyway, I was able to get us a room for that night. We got dropped of around 10pm. The next morning we tried to extend our stay but the hotel was booked. Apparently the protesters were being told to leave, the hotel had 3 different conferences happening that week AND the highway was shut down from the blizzard leaving a bunch of people stranded. We hustled to find a place to stay that night. We were in an ideal spot because it was only 1.5 miles from the shop where our car was. We ended up finding a hotel 3 miles away that was almost half the price. We then got a shuttle from the hotel to the shop, reorganized our crap and packed up a few necessities in backpacks so we could be easily mobile. We talked to the people at the shop for a little while and I called in the claim to the insurance company. Then, we started our trek to the hotel 3 miles away.
We bundle up nicely ;-) we ARE smiling under the scarves, this was today, didn't get pics on the 3 mile walk
We were using my phone for a map... and well, apparently in below freezing temperatures it dies. So halfway there we lost our navigation. We walked up to a building that I thought we could ask for directions, as we approached I recognized the name as a shelter (I looked up shelters as a possibility when I was feeling desperate to find a place to sleep). We stepped in through the first set of glass doors. There was a phone I used to speak with the woman at the front desk, she came to the door with a map and pointed us in the right direction. The road she intended us to take was close to a highway, so using the map we took a longer route to use smaller side roads. At the hotel we were early for check in. I forgot to mention that I called the hotel and they said they had no rooms but Matthew looked online and was able to book a room that way... I was suspicious. Anyway, we were early so we got keys, went to the room to drop off stuff, but it was full of other peoples stuff... feeling more suspicious. So we decide to just go eat lunch then come back at check in time. When we get back the key doesn’t work...uh oh. We got to the front desk and are told, “oh yeah my manager didn’t note they extended their stay, I may not have a room for you”. We remained silent, looked at each other, then back at her clicking away at her computer...”Ok, I got you a room”. She hands us new keys which inevitably do not work, she has to get the maintenance guy but he’s on break, she’s all alone or she’d do it herself, and no she doesn’t know when he’s getting back but oh yeah she can call him, and great he’s on his way down. He goes to fix it and comes back saying while trying to reprogram the door his device died on him but he left the door open for us. Thankfully whatever he did worked because we had no trouble with it after that. That was 4 days ago. We are a bit limited due to below freezing temperatures and no car. We have been watching a lot of television, going out 2-3x a day to get food and found a few coffee shops to frequent to avoid cabin fever. For the first day or two I didn’t mind doing nothing, it was nice to not have to think about where we were going to sleep that night and being distracted from the worries of what’s next? Ready to get out of here now. It has been 5 days since the accident and we are still waiting to find out the appraisal for the car. There were so many accidents that day it's taking longer than usual. There are many factors and worries. We are leaving in a few more days and that means leaving all our stuff and the car behind. Prior to the accident we bought train tickets to go home for the holidays. That was a whole mess of its own. Trying to figure out how to get to a train station 3 hours away, that doesn’t have any public transportation from here to there. We ended up getting our tickets moved to a different train station and are using a bus to get there. We decided to take a train in an effort to both save money and have a lower carbon impact than flying. The train will take longer, but time is something we have in abundance. We leave on Wednesday and arrive Friday, Matthew in Massachusetts and me in Virginia, for about 2 weeks. I have a lot of time to reflect on our situation. I am thankful we are safe, have been warm, brought sufficient gear to walk in below freezing temperatures, and the majority of our stuff is okay. With luck we will get the car fixed with a minimal dent to our finances. Hopefully my next post will be more uplifting. I'm looking forward to spending time with family and friends back in Virginia.
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