Diary of a Wedding Guest: Part I - The Departure

On Saturday, June 20, our friend Ashley got married. She had invited us to the wedding, which was to be held in her hometown of Livonia, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Since Livonia was a six hour drive from Morgantown, we took Friday off work to make the drive. James was not going to go with us because he is still too young to go to a wedding without upstaging the bride and groom or having Mommy and Daddy chase after him the whole evening. No surprise, Grandma and Grandpa offered to watch James for the weekend. On Thursday afternoon, we left work a little early to pick up James from daycare and then pick up our rental car in Pittsburgh. We decided to stay with Grandma and Grandpa on Thursday night and leave early the next morning. Leaving from Pittsburgh shortened our drive time for Friday by an hour and a half. And so with this plan, we departed for our weekend to Michigan. Lori drove this stretch so that I could easily hop out at the airport to pick up the rental car.

Our weekend, however, almost ended before it began. Actually our lives almost ended before the weekend began. About 45 minutes into our drive to Pittsburgh, we had a heart-stopping experience. We were approaching the intersection of I-79 and I-70 near Washington, PA. If you know this intersection, you know that as you approach, you are climbing a small hill at a speed limit of 65 MPH (most vehicales are traveling much faster). At the top of the hill, the speed limit drops to 45 MPH. This is designed to help slow vehicles down for the sharp cloverleaf on ramp at the bottom of the hill. Most drivers don't adhere to this drop in the speed limit and as the approach the cloverleaf they are slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting the wall. For truckers, the speed limit through the cloverleaf is 25 MPH, but realistically, even small cars have to take the turn at 15 MPH. PenDOT has done everything they can to slow driver's down including three sets of rumble strips in the middle of the road. Still, there have been numerous accidents in this area from vehicles traveling too fast.

Thursday afternoon was no exception. Driver's were flying down the hill and traffic starting backing up quickly because of the cloverleaf, which is a left lane exit. As we started slowing down, Lori and I both were paying close attention to the Semi that was right behind us. Luckily he seemed to be in control and we had nothing to worry about -- at least that's what we thought. As we proceeded down the hill, we turned our attention to the cars in front of us and safely stopped our vehicle. Within a few mintues we hear the engine of a braking semi that sounds a little closer than it should be and I hear James say "truck". I turned to my left to look back and make sure everything was ok. Imagine my surprise when I see a semi squeezing itself between our car and the guardrail on the left to avoid hitting us. The NOSE of the SEMI was HALFWAY UP THE SIDE OF OUR CAR! Because this is the left lane, typically a high speed passing lane on interstates, there is NO SHOULDER!

But that's not all. After we were relieved to see the driver had maintained control of his truck and we were lucky to be alive, we realized it was not the semi that had been directly behind us. That semi was in fact, still directly behind us! The truck that almost hit us had also squeezed between the semi behind us and the guardrail on the left and drove the length of the first semi before reaching us. How he managed not to hit something is beyond me. For those that know this area, you know incidents like this do not usually turn out good. Luckily for us, someone was watching over us and the rest of our drive to Pittsburgh was uneventful.

James, by the way was oblivious to the danger. He was smiling like nothing had happened.