can i tell you how i almost just died? and i'm totally not exaggerating either. okay fine.. maybe not died.. but definitely could have seriously injured myself, but there was definitely that possibility of death. i hope it's not karma because i hadn't done anything seriously wrong, but maybe that's why nothing bad happened. anyhow.. i went to a small shindig at nicole's work tonight and was driving home up the 405.. just wanting to get home as soon as possible, especially because i have to go into work early tomorrow. yea i know.. so i should waste my time typing this out... but i had to. so anyways.. i'm going a little faster than i usually do. 85 or so. sometimes i'd catch myself doing 90 and then slow back to 80 and progress up to 85. i was around hawthorne/el segundo, a little bit before the 105, driving in the left most lane... for speedy people :P so all of a sudden i see this BLACK car WITH NO LIGHTS ON, that is facing backwards at a 45 degree angle to the barrier, in the middle of the carpool and the left lane... the lane that i am in. uh.oh. so i immediately slam on my brakes and hear the loud screech and wailing of my tires, so i get scared for a second because the sound is so bad, but i realize (or at least i think) that there are cars next to me so i can't really swerve and i have no choice to break hard like my life depends on it.. because it does. so i brake again, loud screech of the tires, over the sound of my radio, and i am coming so close to the car that i swear that i'm still going to hit it. i move over in to the next lane a little bit and squuuuuueeeeeze past the car and i was probably going fast but i felt like it was slow-mo and at the next moment that i'm totally going to grind into the car and start spinning or something. and at the same time that i am slowing down i see all these cars and headlights flying around and past me. and all of that happened in 8 seconds or so. i wonder what the drivers in the other cars are thinking, what the sight looked like, i wonder what the guy in the car thought.. or if there way even a guy, and i wonder if i went back if i could see tire marks on the freeway. as i was driving away i thought i saw the car's headlight turn on and start to move fully into the carpool lane (only being a death trap for one lane as opposed to two). i got a little mad like.. "wtf man.. you just decide to do that now?" but ultimately i am REALLY lucky. someone was watching out for me. i am lucky that i wasn't more tired or distracted so that i noticed the car in time to do something about it. i'm lucky that my brakes and tires are in a good enough shape that i could prevent the accident from happening. i'm lucky that i could think quickly enough and my reflexes were quick enough to make it around that car. i'm lucky that the check engine light on in my car hasn't meant worse things for me (even though i JUST got my car back from the mechanic). i'm lucky that no other cars behind me totally rear ended me as i was braking and not only slammed me from the back, but could have slammed me into the car in front and hit other cars from the backlash. or i'm even lucky that it wasn't raining and the roads weren't slick because then i'd probably have no chance to stop in time. i didn't see my life flash before my eyes. maybe it's just a myth, or maybe there wasn't enough time, or maybe it only happens when you're really going to die and be hurt and it wasn't going to happen this time. who knows.. but i was totally shaken up and drove 55-65mph the rest of the way home. (not in the left lane.. i wasn't annoying!) but now i can totally see in my head the news spots of what could have been in the worst case scenario.

so be careful kids. drive safe.. especially late at night when you "think" that no one else is around and you just want to get home. i totally sound like a PSA, and i might be a hypocrite in a few days when i start speeding again. but i'd still like to say that i'm a safe driver.. but anyways.. stay safe.. those roads and dumb drivers can be a scary place.

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side note: about the emergency landing at LAX today.. i was listening to the radio and i find it amusing, yet kind of cool, how all the passengers were watching the news and essentially watching themselves and their own troubled plane on tv because jet blue has individual tv's with live cable feed. seems kind of freaky, but they said that it actually calmed them down because they knew exactly what was going on. interesting.