Monday, October 30, 2006

Battlefields and Busted Tires


So a couple days ago I went to a Civil War battlefield near my house called Stones River. I had to go for a class I'm required to take about Tennessee history. I went to the visitor's center first where I got a pamphlet containing info about the self-guided tour from a guy who looked like he was at the battle. Everything was free, which was cool. There was a museum exhibit that had several artifacts from the battle, along with personal accounts from the soldiers and various descriptions of the soldiers and the battle itself. The old guy told me to see the video first because there was a schoolbus full of kids coming in 15 minutes. There was a small theatre with a big red button in front of a screen that you pressed to see the 9 minute film. The film wasn't bad. I watch a lot of the History Channel so I'm into this kind of stuff. The film's realism was most impressive. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of nightmares the kids would have after seeing all those soldiers cut down and their blood running like rivers onto the ground. Most impressive.
I liked the self-guided aspect of the tour because I could just read the info in the pamphlet and tour the site at my own pace. It was cold and raining which lent to the atmposphere because the soldiers themselves experienced similar weather. I had read that this site was supposed to be haunted and I was by myself so I kept expecting some confederate ghost to pop out of the woods and stab me with his ghostly bayonet. That would've made my year. Overall it was an interesting visit.
Coming back from the battlefield was just as exciting. The brakes on my car have been shot for a while now so I'm always careful when I drive. I don't know what happened that day, I think I was just excited about all the history I had witnessed, but I wasn't as careful as I should've been. I was driving on a wet road and had just come over the top of a hill. At the bottom there was a stoplight and it had just turned red. I've provided some astonishingly accurate artist's renditions about the events of this incident. Here is the scene I have just described. There were three cars stopped at the light, one in each lane, including the turning lane. No cars were coming from either side of the intersection that had the green light but there were cars stopped on the other side of the red light. I was coming too fast and tried to stop when my brakes locked up and I started to skid, seen Here.
At this point I had a decision to make. Either A:pick a car to rear-end or B:do something stupid. I chose B. I swerved all the way to my right, trying to get my car sideways so I would stop. Instead I jumped the median and hit the sidewalk on the other side of the road. My tire exploded and I had to limp to a nearby driveway to change my tire. There was a third option that would've saved my tire but I guess everything happened so fast that I didn't have time to react. That option is shown here. Clearly I should've gone with that option but now I have to buy a new tire and get my brakes fixed. The icing on the cake was that I had to get home and write a paper that was due later that day. I got it done, though. Plus I guess I was lucky that there were no cars coming from the opposite direction. So I got that going for me.

7 Comments:

At 8:47 AM, Blogger Josue' said...

Glad to here you are alive and you get 34 cool pts for the excellent artistic quality of those images...If you look really hard, the cars seem to have emotional expressions...:p

 
At 5:49 PM, Blogger The D said...

Pretty Tame by my standards. I remember I tried to pass someone in a parking lot filled with snow, The snow obscured the little island and I rammed it head on(apply directly to the forehead) at full spead and blew both front tires. This was on my mazda bakc in the day. So, what battle fiend was this you were on? Link it!

 
At 7:21 PM, Blogger Antonio said...

That is a tame story. One time, I was driving in Puerto Rico. That's it. Story is over.

 
At 12:24 AM, Blogger Dave said...

I told you what the name of the battlefield was. Look it up. It was pretty important.

 
At 8:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yesterday, I took my cats to get declawed. I didn't have a cat taxi, so I thought, it's right up the road I think I can just throw 'em in the car and we'll be there in two shakes. We didn't get there as quickly as I expected and I really should have got a box or something, b/c they both wanted to be near my feet, which are needed for driving. So, they both huddled under my brake and gas pedal. Nothing major happened, but a few stares from the people waiting at the stop light with me, while I fiddled with something between my legs, while laughing. -Mal

 
At 8:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

what an ordeal; glad ur safe tho and 100% better than ramming somebody.

 
At 10:59 AM, Blogger phun N gab and the Gay Circus Elves said...

That sucks. Last year I was going around a corner at 5-10 mph and then my car began sliding on the ice and my front tires slammed into the curb. The impact felt like I was going much faster, luckily the air bags didn't go off. A few months ago I stupidly drove my car 20 miles to the base with the left/front tire completely flat and the guard at the gate didn't notice it or even mention it.

 

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