The Garden of the Blind

First off, I want to wish a belated Happy Solstice to all of my readers. May your days grow progressively longer for months to come.

Second, I had a bad experience last night. I was on my way home, driving my wife’s car (mine hadn’t started all week, until that afternoon while I was at work) and decided to take advantage in a momentary hole in traffic and go shopping for a chocolate orange (actually a chocolate raspberry, but they’re essentially the same thing). I went to Wal-mart, where their aisle of Christmas candy looked heavily picked over. I then called my mom, who buys these things every year, and found out that they were likely to have them at our hometown grocery store, which was just a few miles down the road. I was on my way over there when I went onto a bridge and the road stopped providing traction for my car.

The car skidded into the opposing lane where it sideswiped a Ford Escort. That failed to redirect my car in any meaningful way, and so it hit the Saturn that was behind the Escort. This second impact was not a sideswipe. The front left fenders of the two cars met, and both cars came quickly to a stop. Both cars involved in this last impact have nearly identical injuries, although I think the other car got it a bit worse. My car has most of the front left fender missing in front of the tire, and some damage to the headlight and bumper area. The other car also had the hood bend a bit.

An Officer Yuen (pronounced like Ewen) came by and handled all of our paperwork, as well as the shutting down of the southbound lane over this bridge. He handled everything quite professionally, evaluating damage and calling a tow truck. No one was hurt, and everyone was very polite and even friendly in spite of the unpleasantness of the situation. After about an hour, we had all the forms filled out and my wife showed up with her sister (and her car, which was involved in a minor accident earlier in the day). They towed my car to a nearby parking lot where we cleaned it out and Officer Yuen gave me a citation for “Speed to[sic] fast for conditions”.

It looks like the immediate costs of this will be a $250 deductible and whatever fine comes with the ticket. The long term costs are that I’ll have to buy a new car (I don’t know if the current car is totaled, but we were planning on a new car anyway and this just moves things up) and my rates are going to increase by a lot, what with the new car and accident and all.

The important thing is that nobody was hurt. The cars crunched just like they’re supposed to, which is a testament to their engineering.