Going home for Christmas

I've been really looking forward to this Christmas break. No school, no work, just time to relax and enjoy myself. It's also cool that I'd get to go see my good friend Tyler Jones get married. Now usually I would just fly home and have my Dad pick me up in LA or something like that but this time I needed to go to San Diego first for the wedding. The plan was for Jake Lee and myself to caravan down to Mission Viejo with our good friend Bryce Mosley. We were going to stay the night at his place then drive to the wedding Saturday morning. After the wedding, Jake and I were going to drive back to Bakersfield. Sounds like a good plan right? It didn't quite work out that way.

We were supposed to leave about 2:30. Bryce had a final that got out at 2 then we'd be on our way. 2:30 came around and I didn't hear from Bryce. It also started to snow a little after 2. I got a text from Bryce at 3 saying they were a little late. We finally left at around 3:30. It was snowing pretty hard by then but we figured it would clear up a few miles down the road. That's usually what happens anyway. So we're driving down the freeway and it's really snowy and really slick. I'm going like 30 miles per hour and hating every second of it. We're almost to a little town called Nephi when things started to get really fun. I was driving in the slow lane going about 45 mph. People are passing me pretty frequently when all of a sudden a semi comes blowing by me. It's pretty much driving in both lanes and it kicks up a huge cloud of snow that had settled on the pavement. It was hard for me to see and I'm not really sure if I swerved or what happened but I'm now fish tailing. We fish tail for a few seconds and then I start to spin. My tail spins to the right and I'm completely perpendicular with the road. At this time I start to yell all sorts of fun expletives and Jake Lee also woke up. He had been asleep and got to wake up to me yelling and driving sideways on the freeway. Probably wishes he would have just stayed asleep. All of a sudden a huge white blur smashes by me and clips my bumper and I spin some more. That blur turned out to be a white '99 GMC suburban. I hadn't fully stopped in the middle of the road though so that was lucky. I spin some more and end up on the side of the road. The other car is driving in the median but made it out okay. My airbag did not deploy and neither Jake or myself were hurt.

So now I'm sitting in my car trying to figure out what just happened when I see some guy has already pulled over and he's holding my bumper or something. Not sure how he pulled over so quickly and was able to grab random parts of my car but whoever you are, thank you. I walk over to the other car to see if the other guy is okay and he's walking towards me. Pretty much in the same sentence he asks if 1. we're okay and 2. am I insured. He did ask if I was OK first, just for the record. And his family was okay too. The only damage to their car was minimal. Mine looked pretty bad but if I'm lucky it'll just be some body work that needs to be replaced.

The police and tow truck come and take us to a truck stop in Nephi where we take care of all that paperwork and fun stuff. Turns out my registration card and my insurance card are expired along with my tags. I have a sticker that was supposed to be replaced in June. Didn't quite get to it though. So I fill out my report and talk to the highway patrolman and all that stuff. He told me he should give me three tickets for having all my stuff expired but he had another accident to attend to. Whoever got in that wreck, I truly hope you're okay but thank you for getting me out of a couple of tickets.

We called Bryce Lee and he drove down to come get us. Luckily we crashed right by a Wendy's so we got ourselves some Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. At least I picked a good place to crash, right? Bryce Lee came in this awesome jeep and took us home. So now we're back in Provo but we found some good flight deals and will be home on Sunday. Sorry Tones, we won't be making it to your wedding but we tried.

Now that I think about it, things could have been a lot worse. Had my car rotated just a bit more, we would have been in a head on collision. If I drifted a little bit more into the left lane, that big '99 GMC suburban would have crashed directly into my door at about 60 mph, which possibly could have been fatal. So yeah it sucks that I wrecked and possibly totaled my car, but we're very lucky that things did not turn out to be a lot lot worse.

I also didn't have a chance to take any pictures except for one on my cell phone so if you want one I can send it to you through text or just come be my friend and I'll show you.

Finals Victory!

Finals have come and gone and I managed to do pretty well this time around. I actually got my first "word by my score" in the testing center. For those of you that do not go to BYU, allow me to explain. BYU has a big building called the testing center. As you probably have figured out, it's where you take all your tests. You turn in your test to the office place then walk down some stairs and you'll see a TV monitor with the last 4 digits of student ID numbers and the correlating score. If you do well (90% or above) you get a word like "congratulations or awesome!" next to your score. Well this time I managed a "way to go!". After 3.5 years of BYU, I finally got one. To be honest with you, I never thought it would happen. The testing center pretty much destroys my life every time I go there but this time I managed a victory. Ben: 1 Testing Center: a lot. I'm making a comeback