Memorial
Day Weekend 2011
Life
was calm from February until Memorial Day weekend. Chris and I joined several
friends in a trip to Bethel New York to see Phish play the opening weekend of
their Summer 2011 tour at the site of Woodstock. We camped at a great little
place that was extremely accommodating and cleaner than I have seen any campground
that wasn’t state owned. The weather was perfect and the scenery was
breathtaking. Chris and our friend Dave drove up early to catch the Friday
night show and I was driving up with our friend Nick later that night since
neither of us could get off work. They decided to close our office down early
and Nick decided that he was sneaking out of work early and bought us some last
minute tickets to the show anyway. Chris was beyond jealous that I got to sit
16 rows back from the stage while the rest of our group sat in the lawn. It was
an amazing show. The rest of the weekend was so much fun, just relaxing with no
cell phones (no reception) and electronics of any sort but an i-pod to play
music on.
The
night of the last show of the weekend was where things got nasty. The campground
provided campers a ride on buses so no one was drinking and driving (great
idea!). Leaving the show, Nick and I got separated from the rest of our group
and missed our bus. There were cabs lined up down the drive so we hopped in one
to take us back to camp. About 2 miles from our site, the cab driver fell
asleep behind the wheel and wrecked our cab, rolling it over. This is where
things get hazy. I don’t remember much and what I do remember has only come
back to me in the last year or so. There were 6 of us total including the
driver and we were in a mini-van. Nick and I were in the center section of
seats and Nick was able to get everyone out of the van. It was leaning against
a tree but laying on the driver’s side so we had to climb up and out the passenger
side windows. Nick said every window in the entire van shattered upon impact
and the van wasn’t even recognizable.
I
woke up going into a CAT scan and was understandably freaking out. Chris had no
idea what had happened and couldn’t even reach us until he went to the front
office to find out if there were any missing busses. Nick had called the camp a
few minutes before that and told them what was going on. Someone from the camp
brought Chris to the hospital.
All
in all, I walked away with no permanent injuries. Lots of cuts, scrapes, bruises
and glass removal. I did have a severe concussion and bad shoulder pain. I actually
pulled a huge chunk of glass out of my head 2 weeks later. I was out of work
for 12 weeks that year. Thankfully I have amazing benefits and an amazing mom
who donated some of her vacation time to me so I didn’t lose a since dollar
being off all summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment