We packed and were on the road right about when we wanted to leave to travel to Woburn, Quebec for the race this weekend - we had already gotten quite a bit of snow (Randy said usually Claude doesn't get the amount of snow we are going to get quite right so we weren't really planning on getting over a foot overnite - but this time he was right on!!) It was still snowing and blowing but we had pretty good distance vision and the roads were mostly snow covered or clear with snow blowing over them - we got about an hour down the road and had just gotten on the 2 lane highway and we had a truck in front of us that was intermittently turning on its flashers and then slowing down - like about 6 times - at one point, a big truck came from the opposite direction and made a white out, which we think made the nervous truck driver in front of us brake, which of course caused him to do several 360's in the road in front of us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were only going about 25mph but still slammed into him and T-boned him on his passenger side and then rolled into the ditch!! Once we checked all our body parts were intact I called 911 and was told police and a wrecker would be there soon - the police part was right but the wrecker took 3 hours - all the while we were in the ditch our trailer with the dogs in it was stretched out across the road behind us blocking one whole lane!!!! They didn't close the highway off but did a good job of preventing anyone from hitting our trailer which would have really been disastrous!!!!!! At one point the police asked us if we were trying to pass the truck in front of us and we replied adamantly "NO" we were just trying to avoid hitting him (the guy coming behind the truck that caused the white out thought he saw us trying to pass) and then the police asked us why we didn't have snow tires on the truck (apparently if you are in Quebec more than one week you have to put snow tires on.............) and they decided that we were big enough that rule didn't apply............
So finally the wrecker comes - and it's a semi-truck wrecker!!! says 32 tons on the side of it! And he hooks on to the back of the trailer and straightens it out, then moves back farther and pulls both the truck and the trailer out of the ditch - --we were in there pretty good with 2 foot of snow all around us -Randy paid with a credit card so I have no idea how much it cost but we had to do it!!!!!!
When we get out on the side of the road we survey the damage and it looked like the "moose catcher" we had installed on the front of the truck prevented much worse damage!! One headlight was out, the hood scrunched up and the guard right up against the grill/radiator but not as bad as we had imagined - they did an inspection of the truck to see if it was "road worthy" and only saw that the spare tire under the back of the truck was hanging just a few inches from the ground so we had to follow a policeman to a small town to try and fix it ourselves. He led us to a school parking lot with 2 foot of snow in it and we proceeded to spend the next hour lying in the snow trying to strap the spare back up off the ground - finally succeeded and then got back on the road to go back to Charente and the Bellerive's barn - got back there about 5 so we had left at 11 gone an hour down the road and finally back at 5 - what a day - incredibly scary but so thankful to be able to still drive the truck and that we and the dogs weren't hurt!!!!
Today more surveying of damage and Simon - the guy who works for Claude's business in the garage and has helped us with many vehicle issues- already said he will try to get us in somewhere on Monday so that we can get the headlight fixed and the truck re-aligned (the steering wheel is about a 1/4 turn off from normal.............)
All in all - we are Blessed and happy to be alive and unhurt!!!
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