I didn’t think it could happen. I’ve never seen it; KC has never seen it. Our parents haven’t ever seen it. Seen what? Well….

KC and I were headed to Des Moines to visit her mom and her dad. We’re buzzing along on I-80 west, I’m driving about 72mph or so and all of a sudden the passenger door window on My Element simply shatters. Well, a better description is exploded. The entire window simply popped and threw glass all over the inside of the Element. As I said before, I’ve NEVER seen it. I’ve seen when a windshield does that when it gets hit with a rock tossed up by a vehicle in front of me. I’ve seen where a rear window had the same thing happen when some idiot kid shot the glass with a pellet gun. But I’ve NEVER seen the side window simply explode.

Luckily I didn’t swerve or anything, but I was kind of shook up. We managed to get to the Brooklyn exit (yes, there IS a Brooklyn, Iowa!!) A lot of the glass nuggets landed on KC; she was pretty shook up as well. At the Brooklyn exit, KC went into the restroom and shook the glass nuggets out of her shirt, I swept up most of the nuggets that were falling out and we regrouped. I bought a plastic poncho and some duck tape and jerry-rigged a temporary cover. We made it the final 70 miles to Des Moines.

There, ZDog and I went to Menard’s and got some more duck tape and some plexi-glass. (Also since he didn’t have one, we got a jigsaw so we could cut the plexi-glass.) Then we went to ZDog’s place and made a better jerry-rigged cover by cutting the plexi-glass to fit over the window and then using duct tape to hold it in place. It’s held since, so we must have done a good-enough job. Tomorrow I’ve got to call the local auto glass shop and get it fixed right.