Country Roads: Adventures in West Virginia

After spending a few days at home after our Christmas trip, we again all piled into our van to drive down to South Carolina to spend New Years with the Thompson clan. We were exceptionally glad to put to good use the portable DVD player we had received as a Christmas gift. Unfortunately, we also discovered that the curvy, hilly roads in West Virginia conspire to make it a really bad place to stare intently at small DVD player screens. Luckily we only had one child throw up in the back seat before we turned it off, and the throw up was remarkably well contained, and oddly didn't even stink up our car for the remaining five hours. Bullet one: dodged.

As we were almost out of West Virginia - just passing Exit 1, in fact - we mostly dodged another much bigger, scarier bullet. A lunatic driver who we were actively trying to avoid nevertheless managed to sideswipe us on a curvy narrow road with semis driving all around at freeway speeds. It was a very scary moment or two, with that sickening, foreboding sound of crunching metal and not knowing what was going to happen next. We were beyond grateful that was as bad as it got, as the driver stopped pulling over, got behind us, and we both drove over to the shoulder with no one hurt at all. Oddly, as soon as Nephi got out to talk with her, she drove off, but we got her license plate number and called the state police. (We also started driving again because the shoulder didn't seem an especially safe place to hang out. Apparently we weren't supposed to leave the scene of the accident, but oh well.) We got a police report filed, and a few hours later we got a call back that the driver, amazingly, had an active insurance policy through Geico. When we stopped for dinner awhile later we could see that the damage was mostly superficial, with no bad damage to the sliding van door, but also looked very expensive to fix since the scrapes and dents extended down the entire side of the car. The next day we called Geico, who have been exceptionally nice and helpful so far, and they contacted the driver who apparently agreed with our statements in the police report. We have received a check from Geico for the estimated repair costs and now just need to get the repairs actually done, during which time we'll get a free rental car, too. So overall, what could have been a very serious, even lethal accident, has turned out to be a minor inconvenience, for which we are extremely grateful.

I know I'm sort of biased, having grown up in Virginia where West Virginia is the default butt of every joke, but as far as I can tell the catchy, nostalgia-inducing John Denver song is still the only thing West Virginia's got going for it.