Another one has fallen.

[SAV912]

Well, Labor Day weekend involved a trip to the midwest for some exploration over the long weekend. Most of college football was playing cupcakes and I had vacation to burn. I've never been further west in the continental US than Nashville, so I wanted to see what all these cornfields and beer was about.

Oh, and I was sick and fucking tired of the 58 consecutive days of rain in the Metro Savannah area.

Anyway, on to the few pictures I got and then the meat of the story.

Attempt at artsy shot of the arch:


Somewhere down there is my peppercorn:


Wanted to go on the helicopter tour but the weather wasn't cooperating:


Watching Mother Nature continue to add to the Mississippi:



On the way back from Chicago (no pics), had made it all the way to Chattanooga and dealt with rain a majority of the trip. It was all of 68F out and very windy, foggy, and raining. Traffic had whoa'd up in front for what I presumed was an accident. I stopped in time, the woman behind me had better things to do. I heard her lock the tires, looked up to see if the screeching was coming from directly behind me, said "Shit." out loud and before my fiancee got an answer to her "WHAT?!", she hit.









Got a police report, told the officer what happened, and he got to work on collecting info. They responded to the initial call very quickly. I hadn't even gotten off the phone with my mother when they showed up so I didn't have a chance to get the other driver's info. My only exchange with her was:

Ditz: Ohhhh my gosh, like, are you okay?
Me: *dazed* Yeah, just soaked. I punched my drink out of the cupholder, so no, all of this isn't me having pee'd on myself.
Ditz: *nervous laugh* I'm so sorry, like, I looked up and, like, everyone was stopped!!
Me: You...looked up. *walk back to car*

Officer said she was 100% at fault. I continued on my way after getting the info for the report from the officer. He cited her, but I don't know what with.

This was the preliminary estimate when I got home on Tuesday.


And it will go up from that. The floor under the spare was kinked. I didn't think she had hit that hard. The bumper was creased but she didn't make it to the hatch. The hatch had to be kicked open from the inside to get my luggage out but after that, it opened fine but wouldn't shut right. The hatch itself doesn't look touched so I'm thinking the latch on the floor is bent, which means this relatively minor hit could be bordering on totalling my car.

Which I would be fucking pissed about.

Anyway, this is my rant. I guess I was on the list for the rash of motorists out there targeting Yaris drivers. Figured I would escape, but no such luck.

Oh, and my rental is a Mazda5 mini-minivan. Wonderful.