talk about end of a long journey.
On friday I drove my brother and sister to Liverpool to collect my father, and more importantly witness the boats cross the finish line. He has just completed circumnavigation of the the globe, sailing in the clipper race
he sailed with the 'New York' boat, as displayed with alot of the crew.
he is the 6th head from the left with his left hand up and what looks like some serious sun burn
. He worked his butt off for 18 months with our little company of father and two sons building fences to be able to even think of trying to be one of the lucky ones that got selected and we scraped everything and liquidated and for the first time since he was 28 he lived for himself again. His 51st birthday was in febuary. my mother walked out on us 7 years ago, after he had paid for her to spend months in detox for the alcoholism that had been a factor in our lives for 8 years or so before. As a man who has his whole lifes work torn away, his family, i think this amzing adventure has saved his life.
I are so proud of him i even hijack my own thread to show you guys
http://www.clipper-ventures.co.uk/2006/anyhow, so after 35,000 miles, and a four hour car journey we stopped in and dropped my sister off at her house and set off for the 2 miles home to ours. a mile from home a very familier juntion i prepared to pull out and caught the glimpse of headlight coming fast round the corner and stopped right up at the line to let them pass as usually people will be doing between 50-90mph down this road. the car comes round at about 65-70 and see us and panics. she blared the horn for the first 60yrds thinking it might slow her down i geuss, and then 50 yrds from us stomped on the brakes and locked up on the greasy freshly rained on road, sliding with the camber of the tarmac right into my driver door.
she locked up at about 60mph and hit us at about 40mph.
the window smashed all over my bother and myself in the front seats, the door crumpled in on the drivers compartment luckily avoiding clamping any of my body parts, and the cars pivoted through 180 degrees to end up locked to each other with our faces not more than 3 yrds apart from the young girl in the other car. She promptly screamed at us and told us we were very nasty people in so many words. obviously just the shock of 50-0 in less than a second. never good for your heart rate. she was in her pyjamas and had been woken up by her boyfriend and was going to collect him.
anyhow, im making a big deal of it because its a story within the title. the funniest part being my fathers voyage of 35,000 miles and crashing 1 mile from seeing his house again in a year
what a finsh.
the thread title regards that my car had SIPS or side impact protectin system.
undoubtably this saved my legs and right arm, if not my life.
had i been driving my other car i would be dead and the car split in half maiming my brother and father.
life is pretty fragile, im glad of those bars.
