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I don’t exactly know what happened. I was driving on a snow slicked road, maybe 30 MPH, I think somehow I started to drift out of my lane, (or maybe hit a icy patch or something, I just flat out don’t remember!) over corrected, over corrected the over correction went into an uncontrolled spin (I couldn’t get the car to break loose when I was trying to practice recovering from a spin last winter). As I was headed into oncoming traffic the guy approaching me slammed on his brakes and of course, also lost control. I was sliding sideways towards him him. we met in the middle. I was pretty sure he was going to hit me on the driver’s door and kill or severely injure me. Near as I can figure, he hit the left front fender with his right front, spun us both, and we smacked rear fenders together. No damage to either driver side door on my car nor passenger side doors on his.

Airbags deployed. I hit the inside of the door under the side airbag curtain, and as I later discovered, the door post with the back of my shoulder (Although I suppose it’s more accurate to say they hit me!).

He, his wife and kid were unscathed, I was lightly scathed. The forces of the collision somehow locked my door and I didn’t have the wit to figure out it was locked and had a dickens of a time getting it open. A car dealer reached through the open window (I had figured out how to open it to vent out the airbag fumes...) and unlocked it, that made it much easier to open!

Anyhoo, we were, of course, in a zero cell phone reception area, fortunately another passerby activated their OnStar and called it in.

CHP showed up in about 15-20 minutes, Chewed me out for not having chains.

‘How was I to know I needed chains?
He looks up and dryly observes ‘It’s snowing...’
I look up and say ‘Oh, duh.’
‘I have snow tires and 4 wheel drive don’t need chains.’
Apparently in California you do. (Although I’ve been waived through chain check points on other roads)
Didn’t get advised at the border check point (which was closed shortly after I pasted through it, and apparently the flashing lights on the chains required sign were turned on just after I passed it.

I thanked the other driver for not hitting my door and killing me...

Tow truck shows up an hour and a half later, I had already told the other guy he gets dibs because his wife and kid get priority.

They had told the tow truck driver he could tow us both, he couldn’t 4WD and bent axles on both cars prevented it.

The 1st CHP office later apologized for his snarkiness (told him not to worry, sometimes snarkiness is appropriate, and no offense was taken). He then handed me over to his minion, (interestingly enough his minion also apologized for his boss’ snarkiness, without any way of knowing he was snarky to me) who stayed there until the second two truck arrived FOUR HOURS LATER. (The guy who used to tow in that area retired last year...)

Darn near got hypothermia. Just as I was fixin’ to beg him to allow me to sit with him in his nice warm SUV, he shows up at my door (couldn’t open the window, the fire dept had thoughtfully disconnected the battery) told me he’d cleared a space and I was welcome to join him.

We hit it off very well.

So, luck of the Irish, the tow company had a tow going all the way to Reno, and I was able to ride along, and got dropped off on my doorstep, somewhat the worse for wear 12 hours after my adventure started. I had my suit case and Company Computer, which I got two days before, a very exspensive laptop set up with the power, graphics and enough high speed memory to run SolidWorks. I of course had it safely packed in the trunk, right against the fender that got smacked. Haven’t tried to turn it on yet, kinda scared to...

Still need to go back and clean out the car, but that will wait until Monday, as the yard is closed weekends.

I really ache, still need to go to the hospital this morning, uh afternoon, after the kid awakens. He got Fallout 4 and was playing it until the wee hours...