Vacation Troubles

At the beginning of this year, in February, my family and I decided to go on vacation to Florida. We thought it would be great fun, which it was fun for the most part. We flew down to spend a week to get away from Maine’s cold wintry days and trade it for the heat of Florida. We landed in Orlando Florida, and drove down to Miami, the same day which was 4 hours or so. We had some troubles finding the right rental car, but we ended up getting a new Nissan Murano, which was great. We were not familiar to the area even though it was like our seventh time visiting Florida. We still have never been to Miami before. Miami was hot still, even in February with temperatures well in the 80s.

When we finally got to Miami we spent 3 days walking around, since driving in that city was a nightmare, which later proved to be an even bigger problem. We all got on jet skis, and I looked at nice cars. Later we headed off to Miller’s Ale House for dinner, which was great. On our way back we were stuck in traffic for like 30 or so minutes, when the GPS provided a different route that was supposed to shave off an hour so we took that route all my Dad had to do was get off on the next exit, seems easy enough… Mind you this is Florida and everyone drives like a maniac.

As we got to the exit we were supposed to take some lady jammed herself right in front of us, and my dad and the lady stepped on it to hold our spots even better, which wasn’t a good idea because the Audi that was behind us did not do the same. Needless to say a guy in a Dodge Ram took the spot quickly and at the same time we caught up to traffic on the off ramp, we had to slam our brakes and the truck behind us did not stop in time, he used us for extra braking and we got pushed into the lady in front of us. This was the first time my Mom, my brother, and I had gotten into a car accident. The damage wasn’t so bad we couldn’t use the rental car, but it was very noticeable the back had two grand in damages, and same with the truck. Everyone was okay and the time was around 5 o’clock, we waited almost an hour for the cops to get there and even longer for the cop to write a report on what happened. The guy in the truck hit us and told the cop that we hit the woman in front of us then he hit us, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way we still would have been in the same situation. While we were waiting for the cop to right a story, my family was making jokes about the crash and were able to laugh it off as not a huge deal, more like a major inconvenience which helped out the situation, because it brought out some light in a bad situation.

When the cop finished his report it was nearing 7 o’clock and was getting dark. My Mom asked the cop if we could be taken out of any blame because after all we were in the right lane, and if the lady hadn’t cut us off we would have been fine. But the cop replied “Sorry, this is Florida and that is just how people drive here.” This was funny to hear because we all though the same thing about the Florida drivers, even before the accident. When the cop had to leave he said, “I have to respond to a call, somehow someone ended up flipping their car over in a parking lot” and we all laughed.

After we left and went on our way to get to our hotel it was now 8 o’clock and we were all exhausted at such a long day, but it was good that we could all make jokes about such a bad situation because it made it easier to deal with. Needless to say this wasn’t one of the highlights on the vacation though.

Photo by ☺ Lee J Haywood on Trends Hype / CC BY-SA