I was notified this week that a speeding ticket with my name on it arrived at my parents house. Guess while I was in Europe over the Christmas break, I was going a little too fast on the Swiss autobahn. Whoops. So now I get to make a nice donation to the Swiss economy. You would think they have enough money, and would not need my hard earned money. The least they could do was print my receipt out on some fine Swiss chocolate.
For those interested, my international driving record now looks like this: Switzerland - Two speeding tickets Germany - One speeding ticket USA - Two speeding tickets, one warning for driving in Georgia with a cracked windshield, and one warning for driving through Texas. Seriously, the officer told me there were more direct ways to get from California to Illinois. One minor accident. Italy - One completely wrecked automobile. I left it at the junkyard. Korea - One Ryan sized dent on a stranger's automobile.
I am back from break, and trying to get back into posting again. This week's theme at PhotoFriday is "Disastrous." I dug up this photo of the first car I owned in Europe. It was a great car, but unfortunately an Italian guardrail was no match for the Mazda. The funny part was that two weeks after I had left in an Italian junk yard, one of my coworkers, who was a complete mooch, called me up asking to borrow it.
Earlier tonight a few of us were discussing the insanity that is driving in Korea. Some might think it is just a stereotype, but I have seen how those stereotypes are founded. Even today I watched from the front seat as my cab driver clearly ran a red light, and not just a recently changed one. Unfortunately this is not uncommon in my experience. This is why I haven't purchased a motor scooter, and why my bike has spent a good amount of time in the storage closet. I still keep an eye out for the car with a me sized dent from my bike accident.
As I walked home tonight I noticed a few people gathered around a car parked on the sidewalk. At first I thought it had broken down and they were trying to fix it. Upon closer examination, the car was jammed up against the tree and the was a man trapped under the car. I stood watching the crowd size increase as more people came out to see what had happened. From what I could gather the car had driven up onto the sidewalk for some reason and began to do some damage. It collided with a large crane game which ended up over a hundred feet away. Sixty feet from where the car ended up where a pair of shoes that I assumed belonged to the guy in socks pinned under the car. Before I headed back to work in the dorm, I watched officials load three or four guys into the ambulance and at least one guy into the police car. As I walked back it dawned on me that if I had started home a few minutes earlier, it could have been me riding to the hospital tonight.
It is every nerds nightmare. No, not the one about Lucas releasing another set of Star Wars movies with Jar Jar as the main character. The one I am talking about is the moment that your computer crashes while you helplessly watch. This unfortunate moment happened to me around 1:40 Saturday morning. I was sending out some emails, chatting with a friend, and watching a little online television, when the dang thing froze up. It then had the courage to tell me that it was going to begin dumping the physical memory. What?? I quickly unplugged my external drive which houses my music collection, and prepared for a quick reboot. Boy was I wrong. Upon trying to restart it, I heard horrible sounds. Then I began seeing messages like, "disk error," "disk failure eminent," and "say goodbye to all your data sucker." I was expecting the voice of HAL to resonate from the speakers just to mock me.
I now can only wait to see if the fine repair people can salvage anything. If not, I will lose a lot of photos, the latest version of my website, a good amount of writings, and who knows what else. I really need to learn to back stuff up.
And the kicker is now I am using my eight year old laptop to get stuff done. The one I kept mostly because I couldn't get much for it on eBay. Now it sits, probably mocking the newer model. It knows that even though it only has a tenth of the storage, it is working as more than a paperweight right now.
I think I obtained my first concussion today. It was a beautiful play in the end zone as I was attempting to catch the football. I watched in slow motion as it bounced around my fingers as I was falling backwards towards earth. Unfortunately, it was knocked out of my hands seconds before the THUD of my head hitting the cold hard field reverberated though my head like something that reverberates a lot.
I think I am doing fine, although for a while this afternoon life was a blur. Like, I know I had a conversation with a friend on the street, but I do not remember much of what was said or even if I made any sense. Dinner wasn't much better, as I do not think I was tracking with most of the conversation.
But I'm getting better. I think I'll go for a walk. I feel happy. I feel happy.
This afternoon, I set out on a quest. And very much like Ethan Hunt's search for the "Rabbit's Foot", I went about looking for what at this point I, for the sake of adding mystery to this lame story, will call the "Bed Bug." While isn't a team of rogue agents chasing me, I think if I were to actually find this rumored item in this fair country there might be a reward.
So there I am cruising along on my bike when... BAM, a car pulls out in font of me without any notice. Again taking a page out of the Mission Impossible handbook, I quickly weigh my options. While I would have loved to pull of the moviesque fly across the top of the car with a two point landing on the other side, the only real option was to use the side of the car to stop the momentium of this body in motion. Yep folks, bike accident number two saw me watching in slow motion as I colide with a car. At the time it was not a pretty sight. Yet, looking back on it, I don't know if my view of the whole thing was as funny as the view of the passengers as they see a large foreigner smack against their vehicle.
They were kind enough to see if I was alright. Which I told them I was, even though I'm pretty sure I saw the cartoon stars floating around my head. After a quick adjustment to the alignment of tire and handle bar, it was back on the hunt. One that did not provide any positive results. Oh well, at least I am alive for yet another adventure tomorrow.
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