The Trip

Three of us, K__, my-close-friend-whose-name-I-can't-recall, and I would often take weekend trips up to the Prescott area during my senior year of high school where we would camp out of K__’s pickup truck and get stoned. On a break during the school year we planned a road trip to the National Parks up in southern Utah where none of us had ever been. The morning of our departure we took the truck in to be lubed and tuned up. We even got the tires balanced and then we hit the road. (Characteristic that I can remember the tire-balancing but not my friend's name). 

A couple hours later, not too far south of Flagstaff, we were on a stretch of highway that was four lane but not divided. On one side of the road was a mountain and on the other was some K-rail and then a cliff ending in a river far below. On the road itself, we soon discovered, was black ice. We hit the ice and slid gracefully across all the lanes without hitting a car but we were facing directly over the cliff. I remember thinking there’s no way this K-rail will stop us, we are going over the cliff and dying. Then the next thing I knew we were still sliding but now facing directly into oncoming traffic and, again, I thought there’s no way they can’t hit us and, given the combined speeds, we are dead. Finally, I came-to a second time and we were sitting still facing across the highway with the truck backed into the mountain and there was no windshield and my glasses were gone.

We were lucky. I ended up with an impressive black eye and a sprained ankle, and the other two guys had a variety of minor bumps and bruises (we apparently knocked the windshield out by collectively hitting it with our faces). The car that rammed us, we later learned, had been speeding and the driver was killed and his young son broke his leg. I rode to the hospital in the same ambulance as the kid, who was probably in shock but didn’t seem to be that upset. The only reason I know I was in shock is that for a time after the accident I was sitting in a police car, while waiting for the ambulances to arrive, and the cop kept asking me for my home address and each time I would give him a different one. The first time it was our Boulder address. The second time one of our SoCal addresses. Finally I was able to give him the current, Scottsdale address.

The good news is that that was the one and only time I’ve been in an ambulance. And I've still never visited those National parks in Utah.