Ice Breaker – Wrecked

It’s Friday which means it’s time for an ice breaker question here on The Stretched Blog.  As you read below and recall my post from yesterday, you may see a common word used in both posts.  The word WRECKED is bringing new meeting into my life these days as I read through Jeff Goins‘ soon to be released book, WRECKED.  I’ll share a teaser video at the end of today’s post and a review post in the coming days.  In the meantime, it’s time for today’s ice breaker question.

(For those of you who are new around here, each week I ask a question – an ice breaker – designed to help us get to know a little bit about each other.  I answer the question in the post, and you get to answer the question by leaving a comment.)

Question:  Describe a time when you wrecked a car (or bicycle…or something else).

My answer:  If memory serves me correctly, I’ve had two car accidents in my life.  Neither of them were fun, but the first one was an especially memorable crash.  Two weeks before my wedding day, I was traveling into Philadelphia to meet up with my soon-to-be bride (Leanne).  I had just spent the night with my college roommate (and best man) at my new apartment, and I was traveling down a busy stretch of highway known in our area as The Roosevelt Boulevard.  I was driving my mint green Ford Taurus which I had recently purchased in an effort to get out of a lease situation on my previous vehicle.  Even though I purchased the car used, I think it only had 5 or 6 thousand miles on it at the time of the accident.

I noticed that traffic coming the other way was stopped as I approached a hill.  You think I would have slowed down, but I didn’t.  As I came up over the crest of the hill, there was a car parked in the left lane.  I tried to stop, but there wasn’t enough time to slow my car.  I was probably doing 50-60 miles an hour when I plowed into the back of this parked car.  My airbags went off, my hood flew open, my car immediately stopped, and I went into shock.  Through the smell of the airbags and the floating smoke that lingered in my car, I emerged from my smashed up Taurus only to discover that the car I had hit was gone.  Yes, it someone drove away and left the scene of the accident.

The police, ambulance, and tow truck showed up.  There weren’t many cell phones at the time, so I had no way of contacting my fiance to explain why I was late.  Eventually, I showed up at our rendezvous location in the front seat of the tow truck.  It was an interesting ride home and an interesting introduction into the two-week period that led up to our wedding.  My car ended up being fixed despite over $11,000 worth of damage.  I’m still not sure why they didn’t total the car.  It was never the same again.  It was WRECKED!

Now, it’s your turn to answer today’s question.  But before you leave your answer in the comments, check out this video about a new book that I’m very excited to share with The Stretched Community: