13, You don't know how many times I've wished I could afford to do that, I can't even imagine what it would cost to heat.
As for the Van, it's got over 270k on it and it's my "work" van. I can live with the slight damage, just hope it didn't throw my right headlight out of wack.
Actually I spent over $1100.00 last summer having a dozen "telephone pole" sized trees cut down, and half of them were along side of the driveway. Just not the one I hit.
5' off the driveway (as you're going down the hill), the terrain drops off rather suddenly about 8' below the driveway level, and it's covered with lots of undergrowth, (smaller trees). About 15' beyond the edge of the driveway, my neighbor has a stand of 30' pines running the length of the driveway, so my options were limited.

Pat I know what you mean, I've got to figure out a way to get out of here.
8 months out of the year we love where we live, but starting in December, it can be a pain in the asp.
Your "slow motion" analogy was right on, I even had time to attempt to try and throw it into reverse (don't try this at home) but all I got was click,click,click,click,click.
Any other time I would have ridden it down the hill and swerved off the driveway at the bottom just before reaching the road (there's enough space at the bottom where it flattens out) but today (as luck would have it) there were a couple of "County" work trucks just 25' to the left of my drieway, and they were filling pot holes as they slowly creeped closer to my driveway. I didn't want to take a chance of coming anywhere near them so I bailed out at the top of the hill, about 150' away and 10' above them.
They probaby got a good laugh out of it, because they were watching me the whole time.