December 2014. Myself, my pregnant wife, and our three year old daughter go to visit her family in Nevada. She has a couple extended family members that live in Vegas, but most of them live in an itty-bitty town up in the North West corner of the state. For this trip in particular, we decide to make the long journey down to Vegas since it had been about five years since the last time we went. So we booked a hotel room and rental car, and planned it out.
The night before we were to leave for Vegas, we spend most of the day in the next town over, about 50 miles out, to finish up some Christmas shopping, pick up the rental car, and have dinner. Dinner was great and the evening was winding down and it was time to head home. While we were at dinner, the snow had started to fall. In northern Nevada, it snows. It snows a lot. We're talking essentially being in Utah and Idaho that far North. My wife and daughter are riding with her grandfather, and I'm following behind in the rental car. It's dark, almost zero traffic, 50 mile drive and I have satellite radio. I just hang back and cruise. I'm in no hurry. Grandpa is out in front and puts a lot distance between us. I can tell there's two trucks up ahead of me, both in the right lane, but can't tell exactly which one he is. Then one truck flips on the blinker to switch lanes and I remember thinking, "that's gramps".
What happened next I'm not too sure about. It happened so fast. He started to fishtail. With each sway it got a little more out of control .... until finally he hits the median and truck flips over onto the roof. "Oh fuck", I thought. I quickly pulled the car over and sped across the interstate, having no clue what I was running up on. I was so sure they were all dead. As I approach the truck I remember thinking, "the door will be in the dirt, so tug hard. Very hard.". I started pulling as hard as I could, but it didn't budge. Then I heard my wife call out "We're ok, we're all ok". She had to feed our daughter through the back window. The glass was busted out, obviously. Turns out the door wasn't all that stuck, but the doors were still locked.
Everyone ended up being ok, physically. It was quite the emotional roller coaster. I couldn't talk about it for months without getting emotional about it. Needless to say we didn't go to Vegas the next day. But at least we had the rental car to compensate for grandpa's truck.