Sometimes The Best Things Are Unexpected...

 And then again, sometimes not.  So there I was, happily banking the curve at the top of  the roundabout on the West Side, just across the newest bridge when much to my surprise, I found myself airborne - actually I was airborne after something resembling a bomb went off towards the back of my car. At least it seemed like it that moment. It occurred to me as I hurtled through space that I really wasn't in control of the situation anymore, and by the way, what the hell just happened?

  My vehicle bounced off the median at which point the driver's side window shattered into my lap. My cell phone which had been lying on the passenger seat ricocheted off the dash and landed in a pile of glass rubble on the floor. I didn't know that because at the time I was wondering if I would still be able to steer when I stuck the landing of what appeared to be the only double axle I had ever attempted in a moving car, no less. I bounced again back into the left lane of traffic.  I remember thinking, V-dub, don't cave in now. I bought you for just such a moment.

  Once I came to a stop, and took inventory, I realized that 1) I was bleeding and 2) nothing seemed to be broken. The blood wasn't a huge issue, random pieces of glass were stuck in my left hand, but no arterial spurts.  I looked around for the other guy, because by this time I had determined that someone in another vehicle had hit me. I wasn't ready to get out of the car just yet since I was sitting in a bucket seat full of glass, but I surveyed the area as well as I could from where I sat. I also knew that since I had purchased the Jetta sedan with the tank option package, (For inquiring minds that would be the Jetta SETO) that whoever it was that ran into me, probably came out of the encounter a lot worse off than I did. I looked in my outside rear view mirror and discovered that it was gone, ripped off somehow, My headlights were still on, and then I saw it. The tire inflation pressure gauge had blinked on, one of my four tires was flat, but which one?

  Cars stacked up behind me honking their horns at the idiot who was stalled in the left lane on the busiest street through town. They had just come over the bridge and hadn't seen the elevation I had achieved on the last jump before I hit the pavement again and had no clue what had just happened. I looked around again -- still no second vehicle.

  Well shit, a hit and run. Since no one behind me had seen the arial acrobatics, just some strange lady clogging up the intersection, birds flew and honking continued with each new wave released from the stoplight at the other side of the river. I figured I had better be the one to call the police. Picking through the glass that covered my phone, I was able to call 911. We went through the routine questions, are you hurt, where are you, is anyone in the other car hurt, who knows? What did the other car look like, again, who knows? An officer was dispatched to check on me and take a report. I still didn't think I wanted to get out of the car. It just seemed too hard. Heck, maybe my door didn't even work. I wasn't quite ready to find out if I was going to have to crawl over broken glass on the passenger/traffic side to get out.

  I wasn't much help to the policeman. "I don't know," isn't considered a satisfactory answer to a question when a possible crime just happened. He wanted to know what kind of vehicle hit me, what color, did I catch a glimpse of the driver. I felt like Sargent Schultz,  I knew nothing, saw nothing. I was driving, then I was flying. That was it.

  The officer called a tow truck, asking me if I had a preference. As if you can think about options at a time like that. Once the tow truck driver arrived, he asked me about collision center options. Options. I'll take the shrimp, not the walleye. Somehow where my car was going to go was figured out. Then I realized, I wasn't going to go with it. I was going to have to try to open that door. The policeman walked up,
  "You were in the outer lane, correct?" I nodded. "Well, the only way for you to have the damage that your vehicle has, would have been if someone had been in the inner lane and decided to go straight instead of continue through the roundabout. As you curved around, they hit you."

 None of this was making sense. The damage was to the front left of my car.  How the hell was it that I had seen nothing.

 A man walked up to my window.

 "I was waiting for you," he said.

  What?

"I thought you'd follow me -- over there," he indicated the parking lot on the far side of a hotel across two lanes of traffic and an out lot. "I sure am sorry, I followed you over the bridge. I thought you were going to go straight.

 "You hit me?" He nodded. My car won't drive, my signal was on," was all I could think of to say. You idiot! Was what I was thinking. I've been sitting here for 20 minutes. Police car lights are flashing. You missed this shit show? Why would I have known to follow someone who just blew me off the road. What if I had really been hurt? And then, you can't go straight across the outer lane from the inner lane of the roundabout.

  "I have to load it up," The tow truck driver came over.

 "Sure thing." I was really going to have to get out of the car now. I brushed glass off the door handle. It worked. I stepped out of the car. There was glass in my shoe -- a tie shoe. I saw the mess. It made me very sad. I love this particular car.

 The policeman was talking to the guy. The guy that messed up my pretty red car.

  My ride came to get me.  The man walked over again.  " I didn't see you. I sure am sorry.

He sure was, he made his insurance claim against me later that night. He drove a Ford F-150, I might add.  His bumper was scraped up a little, but he could drive it, Mr. I Followed You Over the Bridge But I Didn't See You. Maybe he doesn't know anything about how to drive through a roundabout, or maybe he was talking on his phone. Who knows, he drove off.

 "Your story is different than what the other driver reported," my insurance agent said. I didn't ask what he said happened. The police report should clear it up. Of course my car is only two payments from being paid off.  It's kind of old, but it runs, or did run fine. They better not total it out. A new door and a new tire should take care of the outside, but who knows what's going on in tie-rod and axle land.

  Now I wait for who knows how long and drive a foreign rental car that is truly foreign to me. They didn't have a Volkswagon.

  So I suppose I need to decide if I want to add the turret gun option to the tank package. VW allows later add ons you know. That would make it a Jetta SETTGO. It could have been worse. There were no fatalities, well not the usual kind.  My cell phone left me one 911 call before it expired. RIP LG.-6

 This afternoon the snow plow ran over the mailbox. It's been that kind of a week. Bitter? Not at all.