yesterday was a bad day for my car.
driving home from work, late, as usual, i stopped at a creole place for some takeout. they gave me a drink in a styrofoam cup. i put the cup between the parking brake and the seat in my car. there's a change-holder there. the change punctured the bottom of the cup. the soda ran out of the cup and soaked into the black carpet on the floor of car. when i saw the leak, i picked up the cup and spilled the stuff all over me. i tried holding it out the window, but that just blew soda all over the side of my car (which is now sticky). but, by this time, enough had leaked out that i could just drink the rest and stop the leak...
later on that evening, craig is in the car with me, and we're on the way from the new house to the old house to pick up more junk. i'm driving along tates creek road, doing about 40, nothing else on the road anywhere. we're coming up on the massive intersection of tates creek and alumni -- there are grassy fields and brick walls on either side of the road. and, from out of nowhere, a groundhog runs from the median toward the right side of the road, less than thirty feet ahead of me. there's nothing i can do -- he's on a collision course. if i swerve to the right, i run off the road and possibly kill myself and craig, if i go straight, i'll squash the groundhog with my left front tire. if i swerve to the left, i'll squash him with my right front tire. the odds of straddling him, at the rate he's crossing the road, are almost nil. so, i stay going straight ahead, knowing there's nothing i can do, hoping he'll change his mind when he sees the big red thing headed for him. no. thump, crunch, thump, thump, and there he goes in the rearview mirror, rolling down the highway in a very unnatural position. craig is now traumatized --- we both felt the groundhog's body thumping on the car's floorboards. from what i could tell, he hit the low-hanging grille cover, reeled into the right front tire, bounced around, and went under the right read tire. he almost made it all the way. almost. but no nasty spattered blood, no agonizing slow death... guh. you know, my dad likes to shoot groundhogs in the garden because they eat his melons and cucumbers and such. this is a little different... he wasn't hurting anybody or anything... and why in the world was there a groundhog in the middle of lexington, anyway?
and craig was just having no luck, either. while he was riding back with neal last night, some cat or dog or something ran from the side of the road into neal's car's fender, then ran away again in the dark.
Fri, 30 Jul 1999 10:57:56