Thanks, guys. It means a lot. It's cathartic to write about this, especially to an audience such as this one.
A moment of humor in the whole thing: the windshield landed on the living room floor completely in tact -- not a crack. The rearview mirror was still attached. The paramedics were "holy *****ting" and taking pictures of the windshield. Nobody could believe it. Syracuse is not a huge town, and not much goes on there most nights... so my car, still wrapped around the tree was on the early morning news. I got a bunch of calls on my cell phone in the hospital (!) from buddies offering to go over to mom's place and clean up the mess in the house (there was blood everywhere inside, too b/c I'd gone in to call my bro and let him know what happened). A Bieffe helmet I had in the car -- in its case -- was shattered. I didn't find that out until this spring when I grabbed it to bring it down to LI for autoX/drivers' ed.
The worst part of the whole thing was lying in the hospital bed the next morning (still in a collar, they didn't put the halo on until the following morning) and seeing the look on mom's face when she walked in the room. And she's hard as nails. Trust me, you never want to make your mom look/feel like that.
I felt (and feel) very stupid about the whole thing. I was always telling people about the respect with which you had to treat this car -- "treat the gas pedal like it's the trigger of a gun" to use Cramer's phrase. All I needed to do is brake (917 brakes will stop the rotation of the Earth) but I threw in a gratuitous double-clutch downshift flourish on wet roads, wearing shoes that were evidently wet. One mistake is all it took and it bit me -- hard.
Denis - Dad died of cancer at 52. Mom's been a nurse since they were using leeches, so when he was beyond all hope they set up a hospital bed and equip in the dining room (which is off the living room). I consider myself very fortunate to have made it home from school in time to say goodbye in his last few moments of lucidity and hold his hand exactly 24 hours after I got home when he died. He was certainly holding my hand 15 years later.
I'm working on the exceptional thing. I've just got to decide what I want to do when I grow up.
Every morning I look in the mirror and see the two small scars on my forehead where the halo was screwed into my head with titanium pins -- a reminder that I'm on borrowed time and should do something with it.
Hey, this is my thousandth post!
JP