A Near Death Experience and a New Phone

Last week I had an interesting experience. I decided someone up There likes me more than He should. I had just picked up my friend, Patsy, and was driving from her apartment to my house. We were driving down 800 N in Orem heading south from University Ave. to State St. We were almost to State St (just before Macey's) when a car, that was sitting in the left-hand turn lane, tried to make a right-hand turn across two lanes of traffic to make it into Macey's parking lot.

He apparently did not see me coming at 45mph. When I noticed he was coming in to my lane (probably no more than 15-20 feet away from him), I slammed on my breaks and turned my car slightly to the right. The turning car, hereafter refered to as TURNER, slammed on his break and stopped halfway into my lane.

When I slammed on my breaks, I also instinctively push my clutch pedal to the floor and put both hands firmly on the wheel. Turning my car to the right as much as I had and TURNER stopping allowed me to miss him. At this point, however, I realized that I was heading straight at the cars waiting to turn right onto 800 N.

I turned my wheel to the left, after passing TURNER, but I was still skidding and didn't change my trajectory much. I let off the break and my car whipped back into the lane where I straightened it out.

I had been driving down 800 N. in 5th gear. I looked at my speed-o-meter and read 30mph. I put my car in 3rd gear and continued driving. I looked in my rear view mirror and, through the smoke left by my tires skidding, could still see TURNER completely stopped sitting in half of each lane of traffic. I smiled and kept driving. Let me note that all of this happened in about 2-3 seconds flat.

Let's point out my sheer luck here. 1) Noticing that he was coming in to my lane. 2) clutching my car. Had I not, it would've stalled and I would've lost power steering. I don't know if that would've been bad, but it was handy. 3) TURNER stopping. 4) Turning my car just enough before I started skidding to miss TURNER. 5) Instictively letting off my break when I was trying to turn while skidding. 6) Missing all the cars trying to turn. 7) Not killing Patsy who, might I add, thinks I have reflexes like a cat.

Somebody is still watching out for me.

On another happy note of my life, I got a new cell phone. I was tired of paying massive overages every month for text messaging with Verizon. I was paying $20 for 2500 messages in/out and $0.10 for every message over in/out. I usually sent/received about 3000+ every month. That's $50 of overages. Some months I topped that. So I was paying at least $70/month for text messaging, and I got sick of it. I called them three times to see if they could do anything for me, price breaks, unlimitted text messaging, etc, but to no avail.

So, I switched to TMobile. I paid the $175 cancellation fee for my phone (I will save that much in about 3 months) and switched to TMobile. I now have unlimitted text messaging for $10/month. I breath easy and sleep better at night now.

Life is good to me.