Thursday, 21 August 2008

Toast is toast

I should have realised that agreeing to let Andy name my car Toast a few weeks ago wasn’t a good idea, and now Toast is, well toast!

Short version: I crashed and wrote it off…

Long version: I was driving back home from Gav’s at about 10.30pm, down the Nauranga Gorge, and driving off the slip lane on the left to take SH2 to Petone. It had been raining earlier but the road wasn’t overly wet and perfect visibility.

I was just driving under the rail bridge just before the slip lane and something fell off the bridge and hit the centre of my windscreen! It hit pretty hard and to start with I actually thought it was a bird or something, although I quickly realised it was a lump of slushy icy stuff and cleared it with my wipers.

By then I was pretty much on the corner, and saw that the road was covered in something – this something turned out to be hail! I’m sure you can guess how it went from there – first the car started slowly spinning round to the right (with the corner) then I compensated and then the car started spinning to the left, and I hit the concrete barrier. It was a pretty big smack…
There was a guy who was about 200m behind me and saw me impact and slowed down as he realised there must be something on the road. He didn’t crash cause he’d slowed down, and gave me his card in case I needed someone to vouch for the really freak road conditions – The hail was only on the road on that corner and nowhere else, it was very odd…

When Gav came down to help me out, he described it as being like there had been a stream wash out lots of gravel on the road – that’s how much hail there was!

While waiting for the tow truck to come, I went and symbolically picked up my VW badge off the road, very sad :(

So here it is now, State has written it off…

Lane decided it would be funny to write on the bumper, such a funny guy… not…
This isn’t the end though!

Even though the car was written off by State, the car still drives really well, all of the damage seems to be cosmetic (apart from the power-steering lines but they were on their way out anyway!) and the Chassis damage appears to only be on the part which holds the bumper… So we are going to get it onto a proper chassis machine and get it checked out by the pro's, IT’S NOT OVER YET!!

Oh, I just realised I didn't say that don't worry - I'm ok! My back and neck are a bit sore, but I've been to get some Physio and have some exercises to help me heal. The worst thing I did was strain my hamstring which had been getting worse as I've been riding my bike lots due to not having a car - thankfully with some aid from a compression bandage I think that is also well on the way to getting better now (I had the accident over a week ago) and I even rode my bike today and it didn't hurt (don't tell my physio people though!)

No comments:

Post a Comment