Yikes

Last night Chelsea and I had a near death, or at least near injury and near expensive car repairs experience.

We had gone out to the bars on Cin Street along with Chelsea's best friend Valerie, which proved to be pretty lame on the whole. We had fun together, but the scene was just sort of blah. We had a few drinks, I marveled at how few attractive men there are in this city, I saw Mike briefly but he didn't see me and I opted not to talk to him which felt weird but not terrible. I didn't see anyone else I knew from high school, which makes me feel really old. 24 doesn't seem like it should make me feel too old for the college bar scene, but it sort of does. It did last night, anyway.

Chelsea and I left Valerie with a guy she was flirting with and headed home at about 1:45. We were on the freeway just past downtown, cruising just under the speed limit in the middle lane. A truck was in the right lane driving slightly in front of us. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere a silver sports car came zooming up behind us in the left lane, going way over the speed limit. Just as the car got ahead of us in the left lane it made a sharp turn and crossed directly in front of us at a 90 degree angle to our car. Chelsea was able to slam on the brakes and save us, and we watched as the car slammed into the truck in the right lane. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen a car do in real life. I still can't figure out how the driver was able to cross in front of us at that angle. It didn't seem like he just swerved, it seemed intentional, deliberate. I hope it wasn't, because how creepy would that be? But still, it was very unnatural and scary. We pulled over for a minute and I called 911, the first time I've ever had to call 911 for anything. A few other cars pulled over to help so as soon as they told me they were sending an ambulance and we realized there were plenty of other (probably more competent) people helping, Chelsea and I left since we'd both been drinking and even though we weren't drunk it seemed a good idea not to hang out and wait for the police. I gave the dispatcher my phone number, so I imagine they'll call me if they need someone to be a witness about the accident. The wreck didn't look nearly as bad as it could have been, the front part of both cars hit and it seems like most of the damage was just to headlights and bumpers, which is sort of amazing considering the high speed at which they hit. But then as Chelsea and I continued back to our side of town we saw THIRTEEN police cars driving the opposite direction on the freeway. They can't all have been headed to that one accident, so now I'm wondering what the heck else was going on last night.

I'm just glad Chelsea was driving the speed limit. If she'd been going 5 miles an hour faster, we would have been the car that got hit. But we're okay, and Chelsea gets to celebrate her birthday today and we're apparently going to make it to the new year. But be careful, everybody, there are a lot of crazy drunks on the roads out there.