SPA 2010

I am now the official latest SPA poster-girl.  Carole gave good reportage.  I didn't get there til Friday afternoon.  Then my SPA looked a great deal like Carole's. 

Before checking into the hotel, I bopped up to Brunswick to visit Ellen at PurlDiva.  The casual driver cannot miss the sign.  She runs my dream LYS.  The yarns that I drool over on the Interwebs?  They are all there, winking from bins dripping with color.  She tried to seduce me with sweater yarn.  I groaned.  Yarn diet, you know.  Then I told her of my Ravelympics DNF Grant Park pullover travails.  She pulls up Ravelry, finds the relevant pattern question, and dumps it to my message box.  I love Ellen. 

Yes, I fell off the diet there.  And at SPA.  But my totals are not unsalvageable.  And I got some GREAT stuff.  (I can point out here that I am on a low yarn diet, but not a low fiber diet.)

Cutest baby, with mom Cheryl.

Martha, ever resourceful, converting chair back to niddy-noddy.

While at PurlDiva, I left with two skeins of Isager wool/alpaca for colorwork mittens, a skein of Fleece Artist SuriBlue in Saltspray (Luna Moth shawl), and a skein of Fiberphile sock yarn (Inlet).

SPA:  just as I finished saying to KellyR that I am so over spinning merino, I found Enchanted Knoll Farm Josette and her merino/tussah fiber.  Then KellyR showed me yak/merino at SpunkyEclectic Amy's booth.  My imagination is my own worst enemy.  I felt them both sliding through my hands into yarn on my bobbin and I saw them in washed sky and earth colors in a scarf and a shawl.  Now they are mine.  Scattered in there was also a skein of WoolenRabbit Harmony sock yarn in a colorway I've been lusting after for a year:  Pussywillow.

Josette also had interesting pencil roving in

silk. 

Leaving SPA just about killed me.  It is a long drive.  On I-495, a pick-up truck pulling a generator on a flatbed trailer shed a cylindrical object from the truck.  I saw it sailing over the generator.  It bounced once behind the truck in the lane to my left.  I had no place to go.  Swerve and flip the car, swerve and hit the guardrail, move into the lane where the cylinder was bouncing?  I hit the brakes. 

It bounced a second time into my lane.  It smashed into my left front.  I heard a thump, I cowered briefly in the driver's seat, waited for my car to die.  It didn't.  Miraculously, neither did I.

When I got home, and saw the damage, I starting shaking, and shook for four hours.  If I hadn't hit the brakes, it would have come through my windshield, and I would be dead.  This would be a derelict blog, and you would have had to bury me with my unknit cashmere.  If the object (I'm guesstimating a weight of 50-150 pounds based on what I saw and felt) had deflected to the right to the front of the car, it would have flipped the vehicle, and I would be dead.

The guy driving the pickup truck never knew he lost something.  I couldn't get the license number because he was towing a trailer, and going about 80mph. 

I have never relied on luck when living my life.  The fact that I am still alive because I got lucky is more than unsettling.  No one would ever have known what happened to me.  The damage from the cylinder would have been indistinguishable from the damage from the crash.  A small part of the time, I throw a thank-you to the fates that I am still here.  Most of the time, though, I am profoundly depressed by the fact that I could have died in an instant no matter how carefully I live my life.  The part that rankles is that it would have been a meaningless death simply because someone else was an idiot.  It gives new meaning to 'Eat right, exercise, die anyway'. 

I'll get over it.  So will the car. 

Comments

[margene]

Gasp, gulp! Oh my, that would be one scary event. It's wonderful when the fates intervene and we make it through, life intact. I'm thankful you're here.

[Lisa]

Wow. Whew. Wow.
SO scary.

[Adrienne]

OMG! I'm glad you're okay. How super scary.

Once when I was driving on the freeway in So. Cal, a piece of particle board, maybe two feet square or so, flew off the truck in front of me and smacked flat onto the windshield. So there I am, hurtling down the freeway, and it's like someone's just pulled a curtain over the windshield. Luckily it flew off again and landed on the road before I had to decide what to do. SO scary though.

[June]

It's terrifying to have a near-brush with death. Matt had one, a few years ago, and it profoundly affected (affects) him. Glad you are still with us and physically unharmed. :)

Glad to see Cheryl is doing well, too. I have wondered how she was.

[thea]

Ok, when you said "leaving SPA just about killed me" I'm thinking it's yarn withdrawal...

not so much, huh? Glad you're OK! And see, you deserve the new yarn, don't you??

[Risa]

Oh wow. That's terrifying! I'm so glad you're okay.

[Lynn]

Holy shit. You are NOT allowed to die until AFTER I do, is that clear?

In the meantime, buy yarn and fiber if it makes you happy, yarn diet be damned. You and I can trade if need be, to freshen up our stashes.

And now I wish I'd been able to go to SPA. This being poor(er) is not fair.

[Amy]

Yikes, that is so terrifying!

I understand what you mean about the yak-merino, though. Some came home with me, and I'm not even a spinner (yet).

[Carole]

SPA was awesome - it always is. I understand some of what you felt after the accident. We went through similar emotions after Dale's encounter with the cast iron flag pole topper.
I'm glad you are okay.

[pumpkinmama]

Holy crap. Glad luck was on your side, no matter how you feel about it being simple dumb luck that saved you. Hugs.

[Suzanne]

Glad you are alright. Two co-workers had wood come off a truck in front of them and almost come through the windshield when they went shopping at lunch a few years ago. Scary situation.

[Marcia]

Not your time. (My niece had one of those up in Vermont this winter...she was lucky, too.) Glad it was not your time, by the way. Go have a drink and eat some chocolate.

[technikat]

The world is a dangerous place. I glad you're ok.

Those blue yarns look lucious!

[kmkat]

Life is a dangerous business, especially on an East Coast expressway. I am so glad the whatsit bounced left and that you are still with us. Scary, that.

[Elisa]

OMG - that is so scary, Laurie. I am so glad that you are okay...

[TeresaC]

Oh God! I thank Him that you are still here. I can't even make a joke about not burying that yarn with you. I'm just glad that you had angels flying with you on that day. Every day. Love you.

BTW-I hear you had dinner out tonight! Hope it was fun.

[Cheryl S.]

Whew! Glad you are OK!

Just the other day I narrowly missed being hit by an idiot who ran a red light. I know he knew he was running it - that's what really pisses me off. I could have been dead because he didn't want to stop for the light. People are assholes.

[(formerly) no-blog-rachel]

Wow. I'm so glad you're ok. I had something similar happen about 10 years ago - as with you, something fell off a truck, and the driver had no idea.

[Caroline M]

It was not your time and for that we're all grateful. I imagine that you are a well prepared person and have a note somewhere telling the grieving family what to do with the stash and wheels (I'll let you have my address...)

If you dwell on what might happen then you'd never get out of bed in the morning, I had a school friend die in the bath, she slipped getting in, hit her head and drowned. These things happen all the time, totally random stuff to people who eat well and exercise and to the unfit and flabby alike.

You might find that you're bad in traffic for some time, I had my own scary motorway moment and I still think about it fifteen years down the line.

[gayle]

I'm very glad you're okay, and that it was your turn to have a good healthy dose of luck.
Live your life the best you can, find the joy in every moment, and go ahead and eat that cupcake if you really want to.

[Judith]

Thank goodness you're OK. It's always sobering when we realized how quickly something unexpected can end our lives, or change them drastically.

(I read the title of your post and thought you'd gone to a pediatric anesthesia meeting. I'm sure this was much more fun, even if you can't claim CME credits.)

[Judy]

pause... everyday.

Looks like you are onto a color family. Beautiful stuff!

[Chris]

Oh, hugs! Such a scary thing. Not the ending you want to the fun that is Spa. Seriously glad you are ok and live to buy again.

[Anne]

You definitely had the guardian angel-dog with you on that one. I didn't used to believe in them, but know for sure they exist due to personal experience. Yours had a busy day. Egads. How terrifying.

Although..... maybe the extra drag from all that yarn in your trunk slowed you down just enough to be in the right place at the right time to avoid worse damage or.. just... worse?

[Ruth]

Oh, Laurie. I had chills reading that.

Beyond grateful that you are o.k.

[Cathy]

Glad you thought fast and braked - yea!

One never knows - life changing events surprise us all.

[claudia]

Wow. If there ever was an occasion for introspective thought on the meaning of life and death, this is definitely it.

Let's talk about luck. Neither of us, I think has ever counted on luck. Work hard, stay focused, do the best job you can. That's what we count on.

But I have always recognized the role of luck in my life, and I consider myself an enormously lucky person. Apparently so are you. Excellent!

[Kathy]

I can barely read the details -- can't imagine how hard it was to type them. Needless to say, thankfully it all ended with a hurt car and not hurt you.

[Sylvia]

Luck plus skill plus a sharp mind. Whew. Glad you made it home.

[Lucia]

Most of us prefer to ignore the fact that but for blind luck every minute of every day we would not exist. It starts with one particular sperm's banging its head in just the right way at one specific microsecond on a particular egg, the odds that either DNA payload will ever be duplicated in a single gamete being one in the number of light-years from here to Sirius, and the improbabilities just compound from there.

I am immeasurably lucky that we are both still here.

[Hillary]

Wow! I'm so glad you're ok. I'd be plotzing too. Sometimes dumb luck is the best thing to have. Anything else is extra.

[naomi]

Eep! I'm glad you're okay.

(And it looks like you got some nice fiber at SPA, too.)

[sarah]

I hug you and remind you that, although you *might* have died, you didn't. You were fast enough and smart as well as lucky enough to do the right thing - it's not just luck that saved you. Trust me, it was worse when stupidity and inexperience got me into a similar-but-different situation, saved only by luck and my car holding the road. But I learned, and I won't make that mistake again.

Remind me to tell you about the hearse that totalled my husband's last car. When I see you at SOAR :-)

[Kim]

Holy crap.....what an incredibly scary experience!! I'm so thankful you are ok!!

[Tim]

Nancy calls it "trucksam" - she tends to attract it and so is vulnerable to panic attacks whenever following a pickup. FWIW it's really difficult to flip modern cars as long as they stay off soft surfaces (great backstory bit in the extra features of "Quantum of Solace" and then there was the Swatch fiasco over "elk avoidance"). Still, being upright is no consolation when something comes through a window...

The time I hit a flying bicycle helmet will never be forgotten. Spectacular debris cloud!

Glad you're still with us.

[Diane]

That truck driver doesn't know how lucky HE is. If something had happened to you, I suspect he would have had a posse of knitters after his butt.

Glad it turned out OK, I think you need a t-shirt with that motto and it never hurts to stop and smell the fiber, um, flowers.

[Charlene]

Glad this blog is not defunct, even if luck was the factor that made it so. Amused at your clear colour preferences as expressed by your fall off the wagon.

So you'll be at SOAR this year? (Do your other commenters have inside information?) Cool!

[Angie]

How amazing that you were able to think and make decisions in that short space of time. I am so afraid of driving these days that I hardly leave New York City. And it's a big factor in whether I go to things like SPA. So more power to you for still travelling.

[pattie]

wow!! glad you are OK. Things can happen so fast on the road!!

[Peg in Kensington, California]

I am so glad that you are still here. Making the right dec ision in a flash - who knows how or why we manage to do that.

[vanessa]

OMG! laurie, excellent quick thinking!