.... no more adventures please.

I didn't know when I wrote the title of that last post that I was condemning myself to more adventure than I bargained for. I went to Denver today to get my ball pythons. The seller informed me that it was supposed to snow heavily in the evening, so I got up early and had my new pair of tires put on the car and we left by 9:30am. It started snowing at 11am, but it was a pretty light snow so I wasn't too worried. It's been really warm so the snow just melted when it hit the ground. We got the boys, who are just lovely and I will put up pictures soon, and were on our way. It kept snowing, and the roads were a little slick, and the temperature dropped quite a bit so it was very cold out. Everyone was going 45mph on the interstate where a more typical speed is 80mph, so I thought we were being pretty safe. Plus I had new tires in the back and not-as-bald tires on the front so I of all people should be pretty safe right?

Well, I noticed the suburban right in front of me suddenly start veering to the left onto the shoulder [we were in the left lane of a three lane section] and quickly puzzled out in my head that the car in front of him must be slowing down suddenly. I hit my brakes, which thankfully are ABS so I didn't have to pump them, but could tell I wasn't going to slow down fast enough. If I went to the shoulder I'd hit the suburban. If I stayed straight I'd hit the car in front. If I went one lane over I'd hit that car, and there was a semi that was also in the center lane but there was enough room for me to slip by. I cross the center lane and tried to stay in the right lane, but had lost too much forward motion to regain control and was sliding sideways right towards the beginning of a guardrail. I pointed my tires in the direction I was headed which gained me enough control to go ahead and go all the way off the road, miss the guard rail, and slide into the ditch. There was some rocks to the right; big rocks like in a drainage area to prevent erosion. I tried to steer between the rocks and the big sign post (which is what the guardrail was guarding) but ended up clipping a boulder w/ my right front tire which popped it. We slid to a stop, facing the right way, not flipped over, and not so much as whiplash to ourselves. Whew!

A cop stopped by and told us where a nearby parking lot was to change my tire, which my buddy did for me because she's awesome and I'm not so much, and we drove to Discount Tire where we waited an hour and a half for them to give me two more new tires. We drove home, taking twice as long as normal because the roads were still bad. My alignment is off but she drives fine. So... yeah. I spent $600 on a new set of tires today, a five hour trip took eleven hours, my pythons were cool to the touch by the time I got them home and into a warm cage, and my friend and I are perfectly healthy and fine and home. Plus as I was asking if she was okay and apologizing for the little escapade, the first thing she said was "That was actually some really good driving". And my parents are all impressed at how I kept a cool head and didn't stress out through all of this. So, it's pretty nice to get compliments in the middle of a crazy day. Tomorrow... I'm hoping for more fun, less money spending, and less danger!