Shawn Lankton Online

First, I would like to say that I made it home safely… I’m fine totally ok, and back in Atlanta.

Now onto the story. Friday I left Siemens for the last time. The day was filled with goodbyes which were all pretty hard. I met so many great people at Siemens and am sure to miss all of them. Some of my closest friends even walked me out to my car and waved until I drove out of sight. What amazing people!

A little choked up, I started driving with my destination for that evening being Farifax, Virginia. Here I would meet up with another friend and ex-Siemens intern. Saying goodbye to Princeton traffic wasn’t nearly as hard as saying goodbye to my friends. As the night turned dark, I began to become aware of my drowsiness. Two nights of packing into the wee hours of the morning had taken something out of me.

Then something bad happened… I don’t explicitly remember the events leading up to this, but I vividly remember the moment when I became aware of a car that was way too close to my front bumper and going way slower than me. I can only assume I had been in a road-daze, or asleep. Instantly awake now, and with adrenaline pumping, I slammed on the brakes and began to swerve out of the way. I managed, to some extent, to avoid catastrophe, but unfortunately I hit the other car’s back right side with my left front side…

Then the fun began. I’m not sure what happened to the other car at this point, but I began spinning down the interstate. One or two revolutions on the pavement, one in the grass, and one more on the pavement left me resting somewhere near the shoulder. I pulled off the road and checked my pulse. Decidedly faster than normal, but still alive. No scrapes, no bruises… totally fine.

I got out of the car and looked around. One flat tire, one large dent, one muffler which has been ripped off of the exhaust. The other car was pulled over a few yards behind me. She was fine too (although she was pretty pissed!) And her car just had a dent in the panel of impact.

When the cops came, they pulled the cruiser up so as to give me some light. While they wrote the ticket, I removed the muffler, tied my exhaust back up so it didn’t drag the ground, and changed my tire for the (full sized, thanks BMW) spare.

The cops came back and gave me a ticket for careless driving (no argument here!) and told me I could be on my way. To my great surprise, the car was totally fine (although a lot louder than before). The rest of the drive to Farifax was made heavily red-bulled and without incident. I arrived a bit late, but alive.

I shared a very nice dinner with my friend Andrew and ‘crashed’ on his couch. The next day I slept way in (instead of leaving early as planned), and got on the road around 12:30. Again, with plenty of red-bull in the blood stream I made the final 10 hour drive back with no further collisions. Welcome Home Shawn! Tomorrow I leave again to fly to Phoenix. Expect more updates from the road.