how many lives have you used up? or safty belt lesson

i have had a philosophy about back seats of cars and seat belts. i figured if your in the back and get hit your not going out the front window....but i never thought about being upside down in the car.

gio, mj and i headed up to copper yesterday to ride. copper has gotten some ungodly amount of snow in the past two week - something around nine feet? - and we were itching to ride some powder.

the morning started off freezing in denver. my car windows were incases in ice. my favorite ice scrapper (yes favorite) was (and still is) missing so i had to use the crappy one that was left. my window washer fluide pump died on me and i bought a new one but had not replaced it due to the -14deg wheather we've been having.... so ice windows, the cold and all we made it up to morrison parking lot by seven forty am (ten minutes late or so) mj was waiting placidly for us to show.

we headed up to the mountain. we stopped in idaho spings at the sandwich shop - mark was hungery, gio and i were thirsty - the boys got coffee and i got a bottle of juice.

off we went. when we passed frisco last exit we got in to the canyon area. that's when it happened.

mj was driving normaly for the weather conditions.

the back end of the truck (pathfinder) just started to swing out.
then the front started heading towards the median.
mj gently tried to correct this and the truck crossed over to the right lane and then over the hill and the truck flipped.

all of this happened quickly and slowly at the same time.
when the truck rolled gio and mj were in the front seats and i was in the back - with out my seat belt on.

the truck rolled and for a moment i was on all fours on the ceiling and then just a moment later back in the seat on the other side of the truck.

we all remember noise. gio heard the only glass to break - the passenger side mirror. i heard all the cd jewel cases raining down around me, mj heard the top of the trucks luggage rack parts snapping.

then stillness.

the oddest things popped into my head. gio's face was wet and all i could think is that he threw up - but it was mj's coffee split all over the two of them. and then i wanted my juice that i had just purchased; i was quite conserned about it for some unkown reason to me. and then there was the "i wonder what that looked like?" thoughts....

no one saw this happen. no one was next to us on the road. there was a road below us and a man stopped to see if we were ok - we didn't look like a roll over we just looked as if we went off the road. we told him we were fine and decieded to try to drive down to the bottow and drive out.

i got my snow boarding boots on as well as gloves. this took a few minutes. gio and i got out and started pushing.
and then sliently a red suv was flying in the air it's nose backwards from the direction that it was heading. but it was no longer driving it was bouncing down the hill near us! when it stopped gio started towards the driver "baby are you ok?" the female driver was a little out of it as well because she became scared that there was a baby involved some how.

i called to gio to come back and push because my newest concern was that another vehicle was going to come bouncing over the side of the road at us again.

firefighter, ambulances, cops and tow trucks, shovles and -14 deg weather came and went.

no one was hurt. the truck was hardly hurt, mj drove us back to morrison. cocktails at home were in order.

oh, as for the red suv - totaled. the front windshield, front windows and back window were all smashed out. the roof of the truck all smashed in.

someone was looking out for us.

thank you mj for getting us threw that safely.

ps none of us had a camera on us