Sweater Project

Around noon, two wildfires broke out in the Northside of San Antonio. They apparently covered several acres - I don’t know if they are still burning or not. I live due South of the areas the fires were in, and there was a stiff wind from the North. Not a good combination for my section of town.

So it didn’t surprise me too much as I rode home on my scooter to notice that the last stoplight before you get to my section of town along Wurzbach had been throttled. Normally, the light at Wurzbach and Northwest Military allows Wurzbach traffic about a minute of green light. Today, it was more like ten seconds. This backed up traffic at Military but resulted in very light traffic at the next intersection, Wurzbach and Blanco. So light, in fact, that the only two vehicles at that intersection at about 5:30 were the pickup truck with several bolts of carpeting in the back and myself.

I pulled up behind the truck and noticed that even though the longest bolt of carpet was sticking out about a yard from the tailgate, there wasn’t a red flag on it. You need to have those on things that stick out of the back of your truck around here. Then, all of a sudden, the truck went into reverse. And the driver didn’t see me around the huge load of carpet in the back of his truck.

The center bolt hit the front of my scooter and pushed me back. I hit the horn and balanced myself as the truck pushed me back about twenty feet before stopping and making a sudden right turn. I just stared at it for a few seconds, thanking my lucky stars that a) there was carpet between his tailgate and me and b) there wasn’t a car behind me to have been pushed into. Then my rage kicked in and I took off after him.

I pulled up next to the driver’s side at the next light. The man was on a cell phone with his window down. I politely* enquired as to his knowledge of recent events**, but he kept talking on the phone and stared straight ahead. He was apparently looking for an address, and I tailed him until he made a loop and wound up back at an apartment complex just a few yards from where he’d initially backed into me.

I confronted him in the parking lot and found out that he spoke no English. Someone from the apartments, apparently the guy who had ordered the carpet, showed up and did a little translation for us. The driver insisted he’d never seen me and hadn’t hit me. I called the cops.

A very long, angry and uncomfortable wait later, the officer showed up and got both of our stories. We all agreed to report it as a “disturbance” rather than an “accident” because there was no damage to my scooter, nobody was hurt, and an “accident” report would have been filed against my insurance - and required the officer to report the driver’s lack of any insurance.

I have this incredible knack for finding drivers without insurance when I am on two wheels.

In other news this evening, Pat Roberson continues to be a complete fucking idiot.

At any rate, I’ve had my first “accident” on my scooter and am thankfully unscathed. Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to eat a whole lot of chili and watch a few episodes of CSI.

*Well, not actually
**Okay, what I really did was scream “What the fuck do you think you’re doing???”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.