Arthur Dent would be annoyed.
Well tonight I experienced a new first.... I hit a couch on the highway driving home tonight. Is it still considered a hit & run if the object being hit is inanimate?
The drive home from the Arlington hospital started as usual. Tragically I had talked myself out of a side trip to my favorite scrapbook store & instead I got to live my own version of the Douglas Adam’s book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where couches just mysteriously appear due to eddy’s in the time-space vortex.... yadda, yadda.
At any rate, I was in the center lane following behind a pick-up towing a flatbed trailer with two couches on it. They were wrapped in plastic and looked new. As I drove into a section of the highway that dips down, wind seemed to catch the plastic wrap of one couch and caused it to develop “lift”. Then in slow motion, I watched the couch stand on end and tumble off the trailer directly into my way. Situationally, it was a worst case scenario. For 7pm there was a fair amount of traffic. I had a huge diesel truck on my left side and a small sedan on my right side and no where to go to, and lots of cars behind me. So quashing that first instinct to swerve out of the way, I just slowed down, pulled as far to the right side of my lane as I could, impacted the couch with my front driver’s wheel and ran right over the damn thing. The only damages, excluding a not-needed adrenaline rush, were some superficial scratches on the front bumper & the fog-lamp on the left needs a new bulb. It didn’t break, but the wire in the bulb apparently was jarred. I will probably develop a lifelong phobia about burgundy couches from this point forward.
The section of 360 that this happened on is probably one of the worst places to stop, because of the lack of shoulders. The pick-up couldn’t stop either & about 2 miles up the road he pulled off to a stop along one of the exits. At that point I had already wiggled the steering wheel and assessed that I still had four working tires and I was not about to stop. The last thing I needed was to deal with someone ticked off because I ran over his couch. Of course, had the couch been tied down to the trailer with rope, none of this would have happened. I just wanted to go home. So I did.
Lesson learned: so next time I have a really strong urge to go to the scrapbook store, I’m giving in and indulging my inner brat.
The drive home from the Arlington hospital started as usual. Tragically I had talked myself out of a side trip to my favorite scrapbook store & instead I got to live my own version of the Douglas Adam’s book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where couches just mysteriously appear due to eddy’s in the time-space vortex.... yadda, yadda.
At any rate, I was in the center lane following behind a pick-up towing a flatbed trailer with two couches on it. They were wrapped in plastic and looked new. As I drove into a section of the highway that dips down, wind seemed to catch the plastic wrap of one couch and caused it to develop “lift”. Then in slow motion, I watched the couch stand on end and tumble off the trailer directly into my way. Situationally, it was a worst case scenario. For 7pm there was a fair amount of traffic. I had a huge diesel truck on my left side and a small sedan on my right side and no where to go to, and lots of cars behind me. So quashing that first instinct to swerve out of the way, I just slowed down, pulled as far to the right side of my lane as I could, impacted the couch with my front driver’s wheel and ran right over the damn thing. The only damages, excluding a not-needed adrenaline rush, were some superficial scratches on the front bumper & the fog-lamp on the left needs a new bulb. It didn’t break, but the wire in the bulb apparently was jarred. I will probably develop a lifelong phobia about burgundy couches from this point forward.
The section of 360 that this happened on is probably one of the worst places to stop, because of the lack of shoulders. The pick-up couldn’t stop either & about 2 miles up the road he pulled off to a stop along one of the exits. At that point I had already wiggled the steering wheel and assessed that I still had four working tires and I was not about to stop. The last thing I needed was to deal with someone ticked off because I ran over his couch. Of course, had the couch been tied down to the trailer with rope, none of this would have happened. I just wanted to go home. So I did.
Lesson learned: so next time I have a really strong urge to go to the scrapbook store, I’m giving in and indulging my inner brat.
posted by T. at 2/22/2006 09:40:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home