A Sad Day

Yesterday was undoubtedly the toughest day yet for us here at The Rosie Chronicles...for those of you who haven't heard, Katelyn and I experienced our first car accident. Don't worry, neither one of us were hurt - but we wish we could say the same for Rosie.

On Sunday we were on our way from Rochester to Boston, where we had the book signing and interview set up with Dave Isay, the founder of the immensely popular StoryCorps. Because of some worrying weather conditions, we decided to stop over in Schenectady for the night with Katelyn's aunt and cousin. They took great care of us, but on Monday we still had nearly three hours to drive so we left early.

The bad luck began when we checked our E-mail that morning and discovered that at the last minute our ten-minute interview with Mr. Isay now had to be a FIVE minute interview with Mr. Isay. We attempted a weak argument, but there was no budging, so we figured we just had to take what we could get.

Most of the trip was rather uneventful. The roads weren't too bad, snow started to fall...about 20 minutes away from Boston we discovered we didn't have anywhere to go because the woman we're staying with, Kelly, works downtown and told us that if we were to come and get her apartment keys it would take us hours to navigate. We were grateful we didn't have to do that, so we decided to head straight for Brookline, where the bookstore in which our event that evening was supposed to take place. Naturally, we got a little lost...roads in Boston aren't exactly well marked, and it seems like every mile they keep changing names. Basically, about two miles from our destination, we were headed down a tiny side road in front of residences with a long row of parked cars on the right side of the street. We were going to make a left turn that would bring us out on the main road, when we started to skid.

I was driving, so after my instincts kicked in, I remembered what I was raised to do when your car starts to skid: turn into it. No luck. The entire road was practically one huge sheet of ice. We weren't going very fast, but the words from my mouth became increasingly more...ahem...unacceptable, as we rather ungracefully slid the front right of Rosie's bumper right into a parked Jeep Cherokee. Oops.

A bit less calm than usual, we got out to assess the damage, which really wasn't too terrible. Rosie sustained a slight bump over her front wheel, and the Jeep had a slight ding in the door and a paint scratch. Katelyn attempted to ring the bell for the apartment where the Jeep was parked while I tried to move the car. Unfortunately the ice wouldn't let the tires move too much, and I didn't want to try to move forward and risk hitting another car. I was able to at least get our car off of the Jeep, put the hazards on, and put it in park until we could get the owner's attention or leave a note.

That was probably the move I'll regret the most. Not even five minutes after the owner of the Jeep came out and we began to exchange information, I hear another crash. Actually two; a white car (a Honda, I think, I have the info somewhere but don't remember it) tried to make the same turn we did but ran right into Rosie's back driver side bumper. THAT collision, of course, hit our car BACK into the Jeep, and now our three cars are locked on this huge grid of ice outside a row of apartments on a fairly busy one-way street somewhere in Boston.

If you're laughing, I understand...I might laugh about it too...one day.

So anyway. Now the three of us (four including Katelyn) are standing outside, exchanging info, calling the police, et cetera, and are now smart enough to stop traffic coming towards us and tell them that they better not try to come past us and risk hitting one of us again. Cars pile up for a while, but some of them can't turn around; the ice is so slippery a lot of them can't get any traction. A man in a construction van tries to make it up a side street directly behind us, but he gets stuck. Some other men parked up the hill a ways come and try to pull out, THEY get stuck. More and more cars keep coming down this road and we're running back and forth, telling them they should probably turn around and go another way until the police come and assess the damage. Which, by the way, never happened. But I'll get to that in a second.

I don't remember exactly when I went around to look at the back of Rosie; at first I thought it wasn't that bad because her front was relatively unscathed. The driver's side door had a long dent and scratch in it where the white car side swiped us. But the front headlight of the Honda completely dented the back fender of our car, not to mention it broke the covering of both of our tail lights and left the lower part of our fender hanging a few inches off of the rest of the body of the car. It also re-dented the front wheel bumper, driver's side, AND caused a dent and some paint to come off the back passenger side, behind the door.

The police were taking forever to come; John, the owner of the Jeep, called them again and they said that such accidents were happening all over the city (THEN WHY DON'T YOU SALT THEM?!?! HELLLOOOO!) and there was really nothing they could do unless someone needed to be towed. Well, thankfully all three vehicles seemed drivable and with a little help from our...er, friends...we were able to make it to the bookstore with about an hour to spare. Needless to say, I'm totally nervous trying to drive around this city now and have spent the rest of our time on the road driving about five miles UNDER the speed limit...which, in Boston, is practically a federal offense.

Anyway, we filmed the book signing event, in which Mr. Isay talked a bit about the new StoryCorps book and played some excerpts from the interviews he used, had our five-minute interview (I'd be damned if we weren't going to squeeze every second we could out of that one, considering what we'd gone through to get there) and on a much lighter note, got some free books out of it! Brian, the guy who's in charge of special events at the bookstore, said that if we found a few used books we wanted, we could just take them. So, thank you, Brian, for granting us a small bit of happiness out of an otherwise crappy day.

This morning I filed my claim with the insurance company (two separate claims, actually) and tomorrow we have to take Rosie in to a garage and have her looked over just to make sure she can make it the last leg of the trip. I can't believe we've come all this way without incident and now, so close to the end, this happens.

Oh well. Katelyn and I were just very grateful that the damage wasn't worse than it is (at least she can still drive) and that no one was hurt. I imagine that if one of us had been in or near the car when the white Honda came out of nowhere and hit us, this blog (and invariably this entire trip) would likely have an entirely different outcome.