Somebody call 911!
Digestive cookies laying on the van floor, woah!
Cookies laying, cookies laying
Van crash, lets go, hey
Airbags, hey, hey

Well we hit that icy thing
And then we veered into the passing lane
No control of the van anymore

We hit the rail and kept slipping
And I did not feel any pain
And we slid to a stop with a great roar

Yesterday was a crazy day.  6x5 minute classic intervals in the morning.  Race pace.  I've had better interval workouts, but oh well.  Then I finished packing, did some waxing and vacuuming, and we left for Silver Star.  The plan was to stop in Spokane for the night, then continue through to Canada in the morning.

That was the plan at least.  The roads were a little treacherous, but didn't seem that bad.  Then, we stopped at a rest stop because I had to go to the bathroom.  I managed to pee three times at the rest stop.  I'm proud of that fact.  But I also almost fell down when I got out of the van.  It had rained a little, and everything was covered in a thin film of ice.  Everybody made extra sure to wear seatbelts when we started rolling again.

A few miles down the road, we started across a bridge.  Suddenly, we started veering into the other lane.  I was about to ask Dragan what he was doing when we went into a spin.  As I saw the cement barrier closing on us, my first instinct was to grab the door.  Then I remembered that most people who get hurt in car wrecks do so because they tense up before the impact, so I used all of my willpower to completely relax my body.  As the front bumper hit the barrier, I closed my eyes.  I felt the seatbelt on my shoulder.  When I opened my eyes again, we were stopped, the car was full of smelly, fire-retardant smoke, and a half-deflated airbag was in my lap.  I jumped out of the van, grabbed my water bottle, and looked for the other van.  Luckily, the only people who rode with Dragan were Leif and I.  Apparently the other van was nicer or something, so all of the juniors were in it.  I saw it stopped up the road a ways, and saw Leif come out of the van, coughing up fire-retardant smoke.  That stuff is terrible.

One of the juniors had called 911, and we started trying to figure out to get the van working again.  I noticed that the rocket boxes had slid forward, with the front rocket boxes coming completely off.  We wandered down to find them, hoping they hadn't gone into the river.  They hadn't.  They had flown a short way before landing on a hill and sliding about a hundred feet down the hill.  We dragged the rocket boxes up and pulled out what appeared to be perfectly intact ski bags as Dragan and Chad tried to straiten the bumper.

About two hours later, a few sheriff deputies showed up.  By this time, we had almost gotten everything worked out.  Apparently the sheriff's department was having a busy night.  We got everything worked out, the sheriff was pretty sweet about the whole thing, so now we're staying in St. Regis waiting for Dragan to figure out what we're doing with the van.  Leif probably got a minor concussion and he got a few minor lacerations, but beyond that we appear to be barely worse for the wear.  I don't even feel like I was involved in a car accident.  And like I told Leif, last year a few of my best ski races were coming off a minor concussion.

Hopefully I'll have another post tonight from Silver Star.  Hopefully it will be about how sweet it is to have all of our stuff up in Canada, eh.