The near miss

It's a typical morning. It's about 9:15 AM and I'm on my way to work. My commute is about 30 miles, with a little less than half the distance being expressway (no lights). The other majority of the commute are highways, but they have stoplights. On the particular stretch on road I'm on, there are plenty of stoplights. (In Texas, lots of high speed roads have stoplights.)
I'm driving along, with my current speed probably around 60 mph. As I approach a stoplight, I notice a large amount of cars in the left turn lane. There are just enough vehicles to fill up the whole turn lane, but not enough such that they stick out into the left lane. No worries, I just keep on driving.
Suddenly, a car(I'll call it STUPID car) in the left turn lane, about 3 cars from the front, decides that he doesn't want to turn left and he switches into my lane (the left lane). I'm currently going 60 mph, and have no time to do anything. All I could do is SLAM on my brakes as hard as I could and hope for the best. There was no time to check my side view mirrors or to even honk my horn. Without knowing if anyone is to my right, I wouldn't switch lanes over. On my left side, the turn lane was filled with cars, so I couldn't swerve left.
My anti-lock brakes engaged and I could just see the distance between my car and the STUPID car decreasing quickly. A jolt of adrenaline shot into my veins as I braced for impact. I had never slammed my brakes so hard for so long. I just held on to dear life.
Luckily, I slowed down fast enough and STUPID car sped up enough to avoid a collision. I was probably about 10-15 feet away from STUPID car before his speed overtook mine. I was probably still going 20 mph at this point. If he had decided to switch lanes a fraction of a second later, I'm sure I would've collided with him. It's the closest call that I've been in for quite a while (except for the hit-and-run that I was in just a few days earlier, but I'll save that for another blog post).

Snow in Austin!!!

It snowed today in Austin today!! The weather forecasters were actually right for once. They had predicted this two days earlier!! It has snowed less than a handful of times in the 10 years I lived here, so it's a big event for everybody. The strange part about the day was that the sky was totally covered by clouds during the snow, but half an hour after it stopped, the sky was bright, clear, and blue!

(According to my blog, the last time it snowed here was on Jan 16, 2007).