Good karma.

Look at me. I saved my own life this morning. Allow me to explain.

My stupid car is a mess. I haven't ever washed the thing, ever. It's really dirty and salty and snowy and the windshield washer fluid container leaks, so I can never squirt off my windshield when I need to. When I park it, I usually take a handful of snow and drop it on my windshield, and that clears up a lot of the dirt and salt on there so I can see. Of course, a few miles down the road it looks horrible again. It's usually not a huge deal, where I'm afraid I'll crash or anything, but every once in a while the sky opens up and shines the brightest light on earth right on my windshield. The dirt and salt reflect the light directly into my eyeball, making it impossible for me to see anything, driving blind. That's just the preface to the story. Now here's the story.

I'm hopping in my car this morning and hear a revving engine and spinning tires. I look down about 2 parking lots and see a little Cavalier stuck in the snow. The girl behind the wheel is getting really flustered and looks on the verge of tears. I go down there, introduce myself a little and offer her a hand. Well, we get the car out in just a few minutes and I go on my way. I throw the handful of snow on my windshield and turn on my wipers. It clears off a lot of the nastiness, not all, but I figure it's good enough since I'll probably be late anyway.

I got on the interstate and was driving a little faster than usual because I was kind of late. I get out of Peoria and am heading up a big hill. Right then, the sky opened and blinded me. I slowed down a little and squinted a lot. I could make out the car in front of me, so I just planned on following him until the clouds covered the sun again. All of the sudden he slams on his brakes. I couldn't see his brake lights right away, so I ended up hitting the brakes even harder.

We stopped completely. Now, traffic jams in Peoria happen very rarely. I work outside of Peoria, and once I get through downtown they never happen, unless there's an accident. The traffic was stopped for as far as I could see, which wasn't very far, granted. A mile or 2 up the road we had to merge into one lane (amazingly hard to do if you can't see out of your windshield) and a mile or 2 later I see why I was stopped. There was a 5 or 6 car pile up. None of the cars had bumpers, and all of them were really smashed up.

At the time there was one cop car there, but as I sat, not moving, in traffic more and more passed me, and finally an ambulance.

I don't know how long before it had happened, but just think if I hadn't wasted 4 or 5 minutes pushing that girl out of her parking space. Kind of makes you wonder, eh?