Oh, the second most WTF part of the trip:

Imagine a road through the mountains, which winds so much that you're constantly being blindsided by the next curve.

Imagine that one side of the road is bordered by a steep cliff.

Imagine the other side is bordered by a steep embankment leading down into a river.

Imagine the rain starts downpouring so hard that even with the wipers on full blast, the windshield is just a mass of blurry water.

Imagine that due to the downpour, visibility is near 0 anyway. Remember that you're constantly turning around tight curves, further impacting visibility.

Remember that there's a river immediately to one side, and remember how fast the Guadalupe rose recently.

Now imagine the windshield starts getting pelted with hailstones.

And you will understand why we called this our "near-death experience."

My friend is at least an extremely experienced driver (and cautious when not speeding), a former chauffeur and veteran of many cross-country trips and much mountain driving, so I was in good hands. But that was a tense 5-10 minutes for both of us, while he sloooowly wound us around the curves and focused on not veering off the road, while simultaneously imploring the river to stay where it was.

Hilariously, he had totally jinxed it:

Me: "I wonder if our path is taking us into that storm?" *points*
Him: "Hmm, looks like it might be."

5 seconds after the first few drops start falling:
Him: "Well, at least it's a gentle storm."
Me: *skeptical* "So far!"

5 seconds later:
Both of us: AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

His optimism tendencies and my cynicism tendencies sometimes results in him being right and sometimes in me being right. He acknowledged that this was very much a case of me being right.