Premshree Pillai (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} premshree) wrote,@ 2005-10-23 22:32:00 |
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| Current music: | Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart |
| Entry tags: | accident, california, drive, photos, sunnyvale, yosemite |
Accident
I had never met with a motor accident... until yesterday.
Three of us—Praz, Senthil and myself—drove to Yosemite yesterday. It looks like more fun during winter. We enjoyed, however. On our way back, we stopped to have our burgers (which we had bought earlier from Yosemite village). We relaxed for a while before we drove again.
It was some time after we left, and I had fallen asleep. All of a sudden there’s a bang, and I’m woken up: Praz was driving a little fast; when he steered right, he kinda lost control or something, and the car hit the rocks on the right side (I was sitting on the right side, behind). The rear bumper and the right-hand hind lights came off. We were all safe. The right-hand rear wheel axle was screwed. So, well, there was no way we could drive anywhere.
So here we were stuck in a hill, without lights (it was around 20:00), and no mobile signal. We parked the car in a shoulder, and switched on the hazard lights. We walked to the other side of the road, hoping we could get some signal on our cellphones. The signal was feeble—we got cut off every time we tried calling Avis, our car rental company. After walking around to find the best spot, we finally got through, and said what had happened. We were told that a towing truck and another car would be sent.
To kill time, we did many things: sleep, talk random stuff, eat doughnuts, etc. We were expecting the towing truck to arrive at around 00:00. We had a voice mail from the car rental folks. When I called them, we were told that the towing truck had left but the driver couldn’t find any sign of a vehicle. So basically out estimation (that we were 30 miles off this place called Oakdale) was wrong. The towing truck arrived at around 01:30 or so. Turns out we were some 50 miles off Oakdale.
So we got a new car—a Dodge Grand Caravan—and drove back to Sunnyvale. We were back at 09:30 or so.
Nice car it was, the Nissan Altima.
