When a day goes different as planned

by Edwin

Let me first say that I’m completely alright, so there is no need for worries 🙂
Having that said, today worked out totally different as expected. In the morning I spend some time at the computer, skyped with my good friend Rick who told me about the recent earthquake and coming hurricane this weekend at the east coast. He told me that a lot of Americans in Washington DC go crazy buying the complete supermarkets empty, but that both he and Elma weren’t so worried yet. I just hope and pray that the hurricane won’t be in their neighborhood.

In the afternoon Steve and I went to a big supermarket in a village a couple of miles from here to do shoppings for this weekend. All excited about the camping we went on our way back home, but there was a lot of traffic. Suddenly the cars in front of us braked and we had to brake too. A couple of seconds later we felt a big hit from the back, we hit the guardrail and got the car stopped. I never had an accident before, but I can tell you that it’s a weird experience. You see everything happening as in a movie and everything is going fast and slow at the same time. As soon as the car stood still I looked at Steve behind the wheel and asked if he was all right. Fortunately we were both all right and within two minutes there was an ambulance that happened to be very nearby.

We were absolutely lucky that Steve has a big American pick-up car, else it could have ended very different. The truck was damaged heavy, but the car that hit us from the back was completely wrecked at the front-side. Fortunately the lady that was driving the car was not hurt eighter. The ambulance-people asked us a lot of questions and Steve turned out to have his neck hurt a bit, so we went with the ambulance to the hospital. It was my first time in an ambulance, fortunately it was not really serious and I was sitting in the front.

The hospitals in Amerika are quite the same as in the Netherlands: you have to wait and wait longer. After they checked Steve and made some scans we could go home a couple of hours later. Dawn was also already at the hospital and so was Steve’s twin-brother Stan. We were a little disappointed that the weekend of camping would be canceled now, but Dawn had a good comment, she said: “We can be disappointed that we don’t go camping or we can be happy that we don’t have a funeral this weekend”. And that’s true of course, it’s important to choose the right perspective.

We were very thankful that Steve and I were both alright. We spend the night like last night again, relaxing in the jacuzzi and watching a movie till late in the night. Steve and Dawn already changed all the plans for the weekend and instead of going camping, they’re throwing a big party at their house tomorrow with a lot of friends and a lot of food. Maybe we still go to the lake at sunday, so this weekend will still be very nice! 😎