Yesterday on my way to the interview, I got rear-ended by a MARTA bus. MARTA is the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, the network of bus lines and train-subway things whose color scheme dates them quite painfully to the 70s. Anyway, I got rear-ended by one. I was stopped at a traffic light when one snuck up behind me and BAM!
Actually, I’m exaggerating. It was more of a nudge. It was going approximately 3 mph and it just bumped me forward a few inches. But still, that whole “mass times velocity” thing means there was a lot of kinetic energy even at 3 mph. At least, it felt like a lot.
No, not really, it didn’t. You see, I really was rear-ended, a year or so ago, in Kansas City. It was in a downpour, and I was going downhill in a rural subdivision looking for my turn. It loomed up out of the curtain of rain and I almost missed it, so I braked quickly. I heard a squealing behind me, and glanced into the rear-view mirror in time to see the grill of a huge white van right before I was whiplashed from the impact. It hit me so hard, the radio flew out of the dashboard console. I pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall that was right there, but the van sped up and went on. Hit-and-run – and in the rain, I couldn’t see to get a license tag.
Besides the physical and emotional trauma, the impact crunched in the back of my trunk, so I couldn’t get the lid open. A friend of mine, Brian, went with me to U-Wrench-It, a great salvage yard there in east KC, and helped me get a trunk lid from another Mazda Protégé. Fortunately, we found one in the same color as mine (aqua blue), that only had damage to its front. We detached my old trunk lid by pulling down the backseat and opening it from the inside. Then, Brian kicked the back of the trunk from the inside to bend the frame back out enough that the new lid would fit. It was amazing how well it all fit together once we were done – you can barely notice the new trunk lid doesn’t fit quite as smoothly. (It’s smooth enough that water doesn’t get in when it rains.)
All that is to say that I know what it’s like to get really rear-ended. And to say that, fortunately, this wasn’t like that. There wasn’t even any superficial damage to my car -- and yet, the potential for damage was so much greater, as much greater as a MARTA bus is than a van.
Any residual emotional stress from it was quickly swallowed up by my happiness in getting the job, so what could have been a blog yesterday on how my life took a turn for the worse ended up not even warranting a mention in the events of that day.
Thank God.
Actually, I’m exaggerating. It was more of a nudge. It was going approximately 3 mph and it just bumped me forward a few inches. But still, that whole “mass times velocity” thing means there was a lot of kinetic energy even at 3 mph. At least, it felt like a lot.
No, not really, it didn’t. You see, I really was rear-ended, a year or so ago, in Kansas City. It was in a downpour, and I was going downhill in a rural subdivision looking for my turn. It loomed up out of the curtain of rain and I almost missed it, so I braked quickly. I heard a squealing behind me, and glanced into the rear-view mirror in time to see the grill of a huge white van right before I was whiplashed from the impact. It hit me so hard, the radio flew out of the dashboard console. I pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall that was right there, but the van sped up and went on. Hit-and-run – and in the rain, I couldn’t see to get a license tag.
Besides the physical and emotional trauma, the impact crunched in the back of my trunk, so I couldn’t get the lid open. A friend of mine, Brian, went with me to U-Wrench-It, a great salvage yard there in east KC, and helped me get a trunk lid from another Mazda Protégé. Fortunately, we found one in the same color as mine (aqua blue), that only had damage to its front. We detached my old trunk lid by pulling down the backseat and opening it from the inside. Then, Brian kicked the back of the trunk from the inside to bend the frame back out enough that the new lid would fit. It was amazing how well it all fit together once we were done – you can barely notice the new trunk lid doesn’t fit quite as smoothly. (It’s smooth enough that water doesn’t get in when it rains.)
All that is to say that I know what it’s like to get really rear-ended. And to say that, fortunately, this wasn’t like that. There wasn’t even any superficial damage to my car -- and yet, the potential for damage was so much greater, as much greater as a MARTA bus is than a van.
Any residual emotional stress from it was quickly swallowed up by my happiness in getting the job, so what could have been a blog yesterday on how my life took a turn for the worse ended up not even warranting a mention in the events of that day.
Thank God.
posted by Mark at 1/10/2004 11:21:00 PM
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