This is way out of topic for Piano Society but I cannot help writing it.

I am right now sitting in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere in Sweden (Mjölby) as a result of that my wife's car crashed when I was driving from Stockholm back home (about 500 km) pretty late this evening. Just damn lucky that it did not stop completely until I succeeded to find this hotel. Tomorrow I will learn if Mjölby has a car repair shop .

So come on, tell me I am not the only one who's car crash in the middle of nowhere. Do you have a similar story to tell?

Oh, Robert. I'm glad you are not hurt.
You must be very bored stuck out there. Do they have a piano at the hotel?

My friends and I were driving at night in the country once, and a dust storm blew in from nowhere and made visibility terrible on the road. Somehow, the car spun out of control, and we ended up in a farmer's field. No one was hurt, but the car lost a bumper. We were all college girls at the time and had borrowed the car from my friend's brother so we could go on a road trip. It was kind of a junker anyway, so nobody really cared. What's funny about that night, is that it is the first time I had learned about 'cow tipping'. Do you know what this is? Basically, cows sleep when they are standing up, and if you approach one at night, you can push on it, and it tips right over.

That's the only car-stuck-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-story I can think of right now.

Right...the first thing is trying to sneak up on a heard of cows, the second is trying to push over an animal which weighs close to 1,200 lbs. Possible, but cows are not dumb, most of the time they'll hear someone-thing approach.

But do you know what is really fun!!! Running in a fenced-off field with the Bull of the heard in it! 1,500lbs of pissed off, horomone driven animal. Just don't trip or lag behind because...well....that will be it.



On Topic: A friend and I drove nonstop from Milwaukee to Tampa, Florida for a Winter holiday (vacation for us Americans ). The week prior, Indiana and Kentucky experienced a horrible blizzard. As we were driving through Indiana, we saw many abondoned cars on the side of the road, in the ditch, and in the median. A few 18-wheeled trucks were turned over in the ditches which were along turns in the road. It took about 22 hours nonstop to get there. About 1,400 miles.

But the fun was driving back. He drove from Tampa to about the Indiana / Kentucky border. I took over. It was about 10:00pm and I had only slept maybe one hour since we had left. Nature did not agree with me and in Indiana, during a moonless night--no highway lights either--, it decided to downpour a rain-snow mix. That's no problem until about 1:00am. I started to doze off at the wheel, in the rain, at night, behind 18-wheelers. I was going about ~140 kph (80 mph) too. No problems whatsoever. But when I was suddenly awoken by the sound of the shoulder (the asphalt has a formed ribs on the surface, so when the tires run over them it makes a sound thus alerting the driver), I called it quits and woke up my snoring friend.

We managed to go from Indianpolis to Milwaukee (275 miles) in about 3 hours and a few minutes! The Chicago highway system was a ghost-town, so says my friend, I didn't see anything because I was in a coma. Only a few cars sped along the Chicago loop at 3:30 in the morning.

That sounds even worse. I am still at the same place but till visit the car repair shop in an hour. Lets hope they fix it so I can continue my trip. I do NOT like to spend another night here!

Glad you're OK Robert!

Does anyone remember the June, 2000 Atlantic tropical storm Allison? Houston, Texas had a/b 40" (more than a meter) of rain, you know the one.

Anyway, once I was stuck for 12 hours on an overpass of highway 90E just south of Lafayette, LA because the road was flooded in both directions. I think at the spot I was, about 27" (.8m) rain fell in three hours!

Just before getting stranded, I just nearly escaped getting washed off the road. The water coming over the hwy, on which I was driving, had white caps like some rapids, not a good sign. So, I turned around (going the wrong way on a major thoroughfare) and found myself about a third of the way up the bridge.