Shaken, 75 mph

The front left window of my car is now in many many small pieces.

What I remember: Brownish tan pickup passing me, older style. Mostly past. Sudden noise, change in light. Window next to me is crinkling, crackling... Slowing down, pulling over. Glass falls in and out. Breathing.

I presume that the pickup kicked up a rock and it hit the window at exactly the wrong speed and angle. I wasn't hurt; just shaken up. Nothing like having a window shatter roughly a foot from your face to wake you up, I'll tell you. This was on the interstate, somewhere between Blackfoot and Fort Hall. After I determined that I was in one piece, and that the only car damage was the window, I called my mom. She had called me earlier in the drive, and I had ignored it because it was rather windy and I didn't want to be distracted by the phone. After I told her what had happened, she told me I could ignore her earlier calls...she'd wanted me to get Grandma's oxygen tanks filled. Not happening, at the moment.

Anyway, I drove the last 12 or so miles home with no window. At 75 mph. In the summer, this would have been merely horrendously noisy. But with the wind and rain, it was also annoyingly frigid. Called insurance when enough of the adrenaline had worn off. I have a $250 deductible on glass-repair. The window-fix is about $150. So the insurance is useless to me at the moment. (I mentioned this to the guy at the glass shop and he suggested I try for the rear window next time; all the wires for the defroster jump the price up apparently) On the bright side, they will have the part tomorrow morning, so my car will only be ventilated for the next 17 hours or so.

A sidenote to all this: I did not make any conscious decision to pull my car over to the side of the road when this happened. I felt my foot on the brake, noticed that I was slowing down and going to the right, then noticed that the car had stopped. My old Stanza was hit in a parking lot once. Something very similar happened, but there I can't even remember the first few moments after impact.