The Joys of Living in Gainesville

NP: Office Chatter

Before I start a rant, I have to say that things are going reasonably well. The last dissertation chapter is in to the boss, the insurance thing is proceeding nicely. Now, let's talk about what isn't going ok.

Gainesville like to build new roads. They also like to fix old ones. We are currently in month 4 of a 6 month road construction project on my street and an adjacent one. Both are four lanes with medians, so they are not little jobs. The road construction is done by a private company (thanks Jeb!), so they are moving actually pretty fast. Lanes are closed but usually for about 2 days at a time and then they move on to another part of the project.

So yesterday, they have the center lanes closed around one median (about 50 yards) while they redid the curbs on it. THis is about 2 blocks north of my apartment, so I pull out of my apartment, crest a hill and then get into merging traffic. I get stopped about even with the very first traffic cone marking the closure, so most cars have already merged.

So I'm sitting there behind a Lincoln Town Car (complete with wheelchair/scooter mounted on a rack on the back). A Mazda 6 pulls in behind me and stops. Then, as a glance in the side-door mirror, I see a blue Hyundai coming up at about 60 mph. I think to myself "that guy is going to try to pass us." You can see where this is going.

Kid decides he is going to merge into the lane like he should....but he failed to apply adequate pressure to the brakes. He creams the Mazda, which pushes the Mazda into me, which pushes me into the wheelchair rack of the Lincoln. I'm ok so I'm out in 3 seconds with the cell phone. The car behind me was filled with 4 International students and one of them had a baby. So I dial 911 and start talking to the dispatcher.

About that time, the little punk kid gets out of his Hyundai and walks over to the sidewalk and collapses. He collapses on his butt though and is just staring at us. I yell at him to see if he is ok, he doesn't answer but he looks ok. So I stay on with the dispatcher until the cop gets there. I look over at the kid and, as soon as the cop pulls up, the kid starts crying.

I wanted to go beat the snot out of him right there.

So the cop comes up and takes our info. The fire truck comes and puts speedy-dry on the anti-freeze leaking from the front of a Hyundai that is now 2/3 of its original length. I call my girlfriend to tell her that I won't be there to pick her up on time. I then call mom and dad just to tell them what happened. Once she finds out I am ok, she says "Don't say anything to the kid."

She knows me too well, huh?

So as I am talking to her, the kid walks up to the old guy who is standing outside his Lincoln and says "Were you stopped? I don't remember anything for three seconds before I hit you?"

I yell into the phone to Mom "The kid is already trying to start an insanity defense."

The kid never spoke to me again.

So the cop gets us to pull our cars into the parking lot of this seedy motel, but only after the road construction company took about 4 rolls of shots of all the damage to our cars. All the immigrant workers and the strung-out junkies come out and look at us. After about 45 minutes, the cop comes and gives us the bad news.

The kid who was driving like he was Dale Earnhardt's ghost a) was not from Gainesville, b) had arrived the night before on a bus, c) had stayed with a friend, but did not know the friend's address d) was driving said friend's car when he pulled his Richard Petty incident, e) could not find his personal insurance or the insurance of the car. He also got cited for careless driving, but the cop did call a tow truck to impound the vehicle so he couldn't get away.

So my car is now in the shop until March 10 with a crumpled hood and two bad bumpers. It was totally drivable (thankfully it didn't get the engine), but State Farm covers 80% of my rental car, so I'm ok there. Just more aggravating than anything else.