brad and george

Scary start

December 14th, 2009 at 10:15 am by george (LA Life)

It’s amazing how life takes care of you.

On my way to work to work this morning, I was driving behind a pick-up truck on the freeway. I was keeping my usual distance – a good 2 or 3 cars length between us. And then what happened next felt like a scene from a movie. The metal ladder that was hanging out the back of his truck flew up and out into the air in front of me. It felt like everything was in slow motion. I quickly checked all around me and noticed a car behind me – also keeping a good distance and a car in the number 1 lane (I was in the number 2 lane) just a bit further back than the car behind me. I saw the ladder coming towards my windshield. I knew I wasn’t going to get into an accident. I wasn’t going to let it happen. I pushed on the brakes to slow a little and then swerved a bit to the left when the ladder hit the freeway and bounced into the air. The car to the left and behind me was getting a bit closer so I had to swerve back into my lane and slow a little more still. The car behind me moved over to the number 3 lane. And then I got closer to the ladder and it spun around and I swerved around it.The pick-up truck pulled over, but I don’t know for what. There was no way he was going to be able to go out and retrieve his ladder. I slowly moved over and headed to my exit.

Although I burst into tears immediately, I knew I was going to be able to go home tonight and see my baby – to hold him in my arms and tell him Mummy had a good day, even though it started off a bit scary.

I hope the ladder didn’t get anyone into an accident. I just checked the traffic on Google maps and it’s still green, so that’s a good sign.