The piece of concrete was 3-feet high and there was no way Gene Denver could avoid it.
"Tractor-trailer must have run over it," he said, "It broke it up, it was standing straight up."
His van, loaded with tools and fittings, plowed into the concrete and flipped onto the driver's side, sliding along Interstate 84 East in downtown Hartford on Wednesday morning and slamming into the wall above Union Station before coming to rest facing traffic..
"Angels were with me," Denver said, standing next to his van in a Hartford junkyard. "I thought I was gonna go on top of the buses. I thought I was dead."
Instead, his only injury is a bad scratch on the arm he had out the window as the van slid on its side. His seat belt held him tight.
Meanwhile, after the 6:10 a.m. crash on Wednesday, traffic "backed up to Cheshire," as he put it. A Department of Transportation truck arrived quickly and a worker put the concrete back where it belonged as Denver got into an ambulance.
DOT spokesman Judd Everhart said the concrete that abuts an expansion joint in the elevated highway "came loose" and was "repaired temporarily with a cold patch and a more permanent fix will be made overnight."
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"My biggest problem," said Denver, "is we're spending all this money on the (Hartford to New Britain) busway, $600 million or something. I drive by it every day, I live in New Britain, and the expansion joints are coming apart on the highways.
"I have a daughter that drives the same road every single day, right behind me heading up (Interstate) 91. It could've been her. And I think if anyone was in a smaller vehicle, they probably would be dead."
Denver, though, is very much alive -- shaken but alive.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I'm going to church, and I'm gonna buy a Lotto ticket."
