The Phone Call You Hate To Get

Other than a phone call telling you that a loved one has been hurt, I think getting a phone call saying “there’s been an accident, no one was hurt” is right up there on the list of phone calls you wish you’d never get. It’s 7:05 am right now and at about 6:40 am Ashley phoned me as she was on her way to the gym to tell me that she had hit a parked car. 🙁 She wasn’t hurt thankfully, and hit the other car doing about 40 KM/h – she said the damage was minimal, but we all know that means at least $1000 to repair each car, if not more. The weather here went crazy yesterday…

I was out last night at a music practice, and it was snowing but still semi-warm – but that meant a lot of condensation that wasn’t immediately freezing, just getting slushy. Driving home it was windy and getting colder, a sign of bad things to come. Before going to bed I commented to Ashley that the roads were going to be incredibly bad in the morning. She said she heard it wasn’t supposed to get that cold, but when we woke up this morning there was a good six inches of snow on the ground. Light fluffy snow doesn’t give you much traction, and when you have hard, frozen ice underneath it’s a recipie for disaster. And hence, the car accident. It’s hard for me not to get a little upset when I knew the roads were going to be horrible – it’s always the people that go out first thing in the morning that are the most vulnerable to the road because no cars before them have been cleared. I feel like I should have warned Ashley again. Or maybe I should have asked her not to go? Begone stupid voice of hindsight!

I’m relieved that Ashley wasn’t hurt (hopefully there’s no whiplash/neck damage), but I’m not looking forward to either paying a few thousand dollars out of my pocket, or claiming it through insurance and having those blood sucking leeches charge me many more thousands of dollars over a period of several years (I have a special, burning dislike of insurance companies). Here’s hoping the damage is less than I fear…