Hurricane Irene didn't even hit North Carolina directly, and it still almost killed me.

Or, to put it more accurately, the indirect hit my state took from Hurricane Irene indirectly contributed to my almost getting killed.

It all started with a camping trip to southern Virginia. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep Saturday night, and getting up early to make the three-hour drive home before going in to work on Sunday wasn't exactly a treat, either.

Let's just say I wasn't yet bleary, but I could smell it from there.

So after showering and making some attempt to get rid of the camping funk, I drove in to work. It was raining steadily, but not horribly hard or anything. Still, as I climbed a hill on the freeway, I could feel the rear end of the T-bird getting a bit squirrelly.

A note on hydroplaning: You have to work if you want to hydroplane going uphill. It's possible, mind you, but not easy.

Right. I hadn't really been paying attention to how my car was driving and then I was over the crest of the hill. My car immediately skidded to the left. I steered that way, overcorrecting a bit. The car swung to the right. No big deal. I was in control. Then, for reasons that are still inexplicable, I did something truly stupid. I tapped the brakes.

I learned this lesson a few years back when I lived in Florida. Once, after a short rain which had been preceded by a dry spell, I had tapped the T-bird's brakes when I heard an ambulance somewhere. The car spun around four times, finally ending up going the direction it had been traveling in the first place at the same speed. No harm, no foul.

This time, I was on a freeway. Doing less than the speed limit (by a touch; it was raining pretty well), but still a bit above 60. As soon as my foot hit the brakes, the car went into a full spin.

At that point, I didn't panic any further. Mostly because I was well aware that I was in for a ride and I had absolutely no control over where the car went. What it did was spin across the two lanes on my side, scrape the shoulder and then hurtle back across my two lanes, the median, the two lanes on the other side, scrape that shoulder and then boogie back across the wrong two lanes and the median again, stopping just short of the lanes I had been traveling in in the first place, with the car pointed in the right direction. All in full spin mode.

Got that?

I hopped out of the car, expecting to see at least one blown tire. I figured you couldn't plow across that much asphalt and grass without at least separating a tire from the rims. But, amazingly, all I had done was burp the tires. The front driver-side tire had picked up a clump of grass (which it was grasping miserly now that the seal was tight again), but that was the extent of the physical damage. There would be "mud in the tires," in a literal sense, and almost certainly a problem with the alignment, but apparently nothing horrific had happened.

So I started the car back up and drove in to work, adding air where necessary to the tires at a gas station on my way into downtown Raleigh.

If any other car had been within a quarter-mile of me, I'd have probably died or possibly killed someone else. Being in an out-of-control car at 60 mph isn't the healthiest thing in the world.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that if I had been around other cars, I would have actually paid attention to the first signs of hydroplaning. I wouldn't have been in the position I was cresting the hill; I would have been prepared for the shift in water flow that spun me out in the first place.

Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that I got lucky all those years ago in Florida, and I got lucky on Sunday. Perhaps this will teach me that I'm really not the world's greatest driver. I mean, I've driven through some seriously dangerous situations without a scratch, and then I've spun out the T-bird twice at times when I shouldn't have. Maybe it's the car. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe the hurricane wasn't as minor as it seemed.

I just don't know. What I can say is that the car got me to work and back without further incident, and it drove fairly well considering the gusty winds and all. I may have managed to fly across four lanes of traffic and a median twice without damaging my car. I doubt it, of course. And you know, I was damned happy to see dry pavement when I left work late Sunday night. No need to court fate or anything.

If you would like to buy a spinout-prone 1988 T-Bird, please contact Jon Worley in Durham, N.C.