"Gary's Greatest Hit"

Yesterday I was driving to Utah with a 7 students to Challenge conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. We left the Boulder area about 6:30 Am and were cruising along at great pace. It was a beautiful morning and all the students were hanging out and connecting in the van.

Then the entire day changed, I was cruising along about 72 mph and then out of the corner of my eye I saw this blur, it actually was a couple of blurs... It happened so fast one moment everything was great the next it felt like I hit a brink wall. From the left had side of the road two deers hopped out on the interstate. There I was minding my own business and a suicide deer jumped out in the middle of the road wanting to get hit.

I praise God that I didn't see it earlier because I probably would have done something stupid like swerve in a 15 passenger van at plus 70. That would have been a flipped the entire van. But God was sovereign and only allowed me to caught a glimpse of the deer right before we hit it. A girl sitting in the back said she started to scream, but I didn't hear her because I was so focused on hitting the dear as square on as I could so that the van would stay the course and not roll over.

So at 72 mph we smacked, demolished and collided with the deer. Now this is what I remember...We hit the deer head on with the majority of the body smacking into the front driver side of the car, David the student sitting next to me says that the deers head flopped onto the windshield with its tongue sticking out and its neck acting like a dangling noodle. After that moment the hood of the van flipped up so that we could see the road or the deer at this point. I could tell that the deer was still on the van for what seemed like a 1/2 mile, but was probably only 50 yards, then the deer went to the ground and the front driver wheel went over the deer's body followed by the back passenger side wheel which felt like a giant speed bump. There is still question in the van if we actually hit a deer, some debate it might have been an elk. Anyways it was the largest deer I have ever seen. Then after what seemed like 5 minutes we slowed down enough for the hood to fall back into place.

As I pulled over to the side all I could see was half the deer's body in the left lane and the other half in the right lane with two legs sticking straight up in the air.

We continued on to the next off ramp which was about a mile away and pulled into the gas station to see the damage the van took. I which I would have stopped on the highway to see what actually happened, but I was so thankful that no one was hurt and I didn't want to be struck on the interstate with seven students. But I did take a few pictures of the van and the carnage of the accident.