Wednesday, April 12, 2006

A series of unfortunate events...or why you should listen to the warning on the label.

I was hopped up on the goofballs yesterday (Zyrtec D) and was kind of coming down off my antihistamine high round about the time I had to head out to school. Now, I was feeling a little dopey, a little sleepy, and generally not all there, so I had a king-sized chocolate bar to perk me up. The label on the drug vial reads "May Cause Drowsiness. Use care when operating a car or dangerous machinery". Yeah, um...I maybe didn't read that yesterday.

So, I got to school and for reasons I care not to go into here, I had to leave right away. I dropped off some stuff for Gloria & Heather, and headed back to the car. When I went to swing my tote bag with all my school books and supplies onto the passenger seat, it sloshed. Slosh? That's not a sound books are supposed to make. Apparently, the entire contents of a giant 2 liter water bottle spilled into my tote bag and my books and pens and snacks were soaked! CRAP!!! I dumped the water in the parking lot, spread the books and papers out in my truck to kind of air out and headed home.

The freeway at 6:00PM is not pretty, so I took the surface streets. Did you know you can't make a left from Alvarado onto Sunset between 7AM and 7PM? Neither did I. I had to go two blocks out of my way, then around a block, then back to Alvarado to make a right onto Sunset. Things were going fine until I got to the corner where Sunset and Hollywood blvds intersect. (see illustration).

I needed to be in the farthest left turn lane, and the end of the bus (the orange blob) was right at the end of the entrance to that lane, so I was kind of doing some illegal driving by pulling around the bus, but not too illegal, this being LA and all. I pulled around the bus, misjudged the space available when I went to straighten my car out, and ended up sideswiping the back end of the bus. I don't think the bus driver felt anything, or if he did he didn't register it because I looked up at him as I was pulling alongside his driver's side window and he didn't seem aware. So, I kept going. Okay, technically, it was a hit and run, but the damage was all to my car, so I'm the one who suffers for it. It's not too bad, though. At least it wasn't a brand new car.
Note the abrasions on the wheel well, near the door. The trim on the door is scraped too.

1 comment:

dizzy von damn! said...

they don't care. i was once on a bus that drove into a parked car and kept going.