Opening Weekend

This was opening weekend for deer rifle season here in the Northwoods. You can tell we are living in a different area of the country by all of the celebrations taking place to mark this weekend. There were special dinners in town, craft shows and open houses all over town for the "deer hunting widows" to celebrate their husbands being gone all weekend, specials at gas stations....free coke for anyone wearing blaze orange! The funniest thing was the message I got from Kindra's school. They have an automated system that calls each house with a recorded message from the principal when he needs to let us know about events. Well, we had a message last week explaining in great detail the forms parents need to fill out for their children to miss school this week for deer season!!

Well, I got a deer....on opening weekend!! Unfortunately, I didn't get the deer with a rifle....I got it with my Suburban!! I was on my way home from Marshfield, WI for Anna's first gymnastics meet (more on that later). It had turned dark around 5PM, as we were leaving Wausau. Around 530, we were around Tomahawk, coming north on highway 51. I was in the fast lane, going about 70 MPH, passing a truck....and all of a sudden this deer was right in front of us. I swear, she looked at me, and then THUD. The guy I had been passing slowed way down, I put on my blinkers and pulled over to the shoulder. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I smelled something horrible and heard hissing sounds, so I yelled for Anna to get Noah out of the car (they were the only 2 with me). The guy who I'd been passing pulled up to make sure we were ok, and he took a look at the car with me...the front was pretty messed up!! He said it would be safe to sit in the car, so I got the kids back inside and got them a blanket from the back of the Suburban. I called Pavan while this guy went back to see if the deer was still alive....I'm not sure if he was going to put it out of it's misery, or see if he could take it home for opening weekend! HaHa. I already knew it was dead....I would think you could wrestle with a Suburban going 70 MPH and live!!

A few minutes later, a police officer pulled up to check on us. He'd been going the other direction and had seen us pulled over with just one blinker working, and figured we'd hit a deer. Obviously this is a common thing up here, especially this time of year. Then he saw the deer, it had been thrown all the way to the other side of the highway...and he said I tenderized it really well!! Not something you'd want to take home....

He stayed with us for about 45 minutes, filed the report, called a tow truck, talked with us about all sorts of stuff, made sure we were warm enough. Really nice guy. It took about an hour for Pavan and the tow truck to show up. Pavan had been at dinner with Kindra Amaya and Kindra's friend Kirsten. He had to take Kirsten home (left Kindra with her so we would all fit in his truck), and then drive the 30 minutes to find us. We watched the video from Anna's meet, talked with the officer, and took pictures and video of the front of the Suburban. Amazingly, the inside of the car stayed very warm, thank goodness! We got the truck to a body shop in Rhinelander around 730 PM. There were three guys working when we got there, so they took it right inside and opened the hood so Pavan could take more pictures. Thankfully, not much is damaged in the engine, so it'll be mostly body work. The radiator is apparently smashed...not that I know much about cars....but with the holiday it'll be at least a couple of weeks before we have our trusty Suburban back.

Seriously though....I am so thankful we were driving a Suburban. Noah and Anna were asleep in the back of the car when we hit the deer, and it didn't even wake Noah up. Anna just said, what was that, and I told here we'd hit a deer and needed to pull over and make sure the car was ok. I didn't even realize I'd had any damage, the impact was so minimal. It was when I saw the front of the car, that I realized how huge the impact really was. I didn't jerk forward in my seat at all, it's just amazing to me how well our car absorbed the impact of that deer, going 70 mph. If we'd been in a small car, I truly believe we'd have been injured if not killed. That deer would have been thrown up into the windshield, and I hate to think what could have happened at 70 mph!

Of course, we are planning to head to KC tomorrow when the kids get home from school. So first thing this morning I started calling around to find a rental car that would hold all of us and our luggage. Luck was with me this morning.....the second place I called has a Durango being delivered this afternoon, a brand new one!! So I rented it for the next 2 weeks. Insurance will only cover about a third of the cost to rent it....funny how you pay to insure a SUBURBAN, and they pay to rent a compact car!! Go figure.

Anyway, on to Anna's gymnastics meet. She did AWESOME!! She got a first place medal for her floor routine (she got an 8.8!!!), two third place medals, one fourth place ribbon, and a 2nd place team ribbon. Our team was the smallest by far, we only had 7 girls....there were 3 teams, the biggest probably had 30 girls there, but we did great! Tonight at practice they will go over their scores, what they lost points for, and start preparing for their next meet, which is December 3rd in Antigo, WI.

Better get going. This is the second time I've had to type an entry for today, last time I got an error message and it erased the whole thing. So hopefully this time it will save ok.

More later!

Rebecca