Saturday, November 06, 2004
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Bunged Bumper
Every day as I drive Jim to and from work I have to cross the
Alex Fraser Bridge. It's not too bad. Six wide lanes that funnel traffic that come off
Highway 91 into Surrey and Delta. I cross this bridge daily, but I only have to cross it during rush hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On TuTh, I only have one class from 3:30-5:00pm. So what I end up doing is driving from UBC directly to Jim's dad's place where he waits for me to pick him up. (Jim gets off work at 4:00pm) Five in the afternoon, right smack in the middle of rush hour when all the working schmoes get out of their offices in Vancouver and are bustling to get to their homes in the suburbs. Surprisingly, it's not that bad, at least, not until I get to the Alex Fraser Bridge. That's when the stop and go traffic begins. You see, the bridge not only funnels traffic from Highway 91, but from a bunch of other major routes as well. The stop and go is a result of
50 thousand lanes trying to merge into three and the cars in those lanes trying to get into the right lane (River Road Exit), the middle lane (Nordel Way Exit) or the left lane (straight ahead. I have no idea where this goes, actually...)
Then you have the requisite bastards who instead of waiting with everyone else to get to the bridge and over it will squeeze into the merge lane, speed past all the stopped cars and try and merge in about 30 cars further ahead. On principle, I don't let these guys in. After all, I just spent 20 minutes in a car with inconsistent radio(interesting story, really...), a heating system that's permanently set on high so that it's all or nothing (same interesting story as above) and sore legs from having to constantly alternate between clutch, gas and brake. I'm never about to let anyone cut the queue without giving them any grief for it. Often though, it's not as if I have a choice. Just this Thursday an
Audi forced me to brake. It would have crashed into me otherwise. In retrospect, I should've let it hit me. He would have been at fault and in my beat-up 95 Honda Civic I really had nothing to lose. Insurance pay outs, injury claims, all would have been relatively entertaining. The Audi was not the worst thing that happened to me on the bridge on Thursday though. The big, black
GMC truck was.
Relax. I'm fine. My bumper got pretty bunged up though.
A stick shift it not easy to pilot in stop and go traffic. Who out can say that they don't stall in stop and go (who don't drive an automatic)? Show of hands? Liars. Anyway. The bridge was particularly nasty. With Daylight savings time on Oct 30th and the plain and simple fact that the days are getting shorter it was nighttime dark on the bridge by the time I reached it. It was also drizzling slightly. Incidently, I was in my pjs, but that's beside the point. (No, I didn't wear my pjs to class, I missed class because I was taking a nap. Oh shuddup. I
would have picked Jim up earlier seeing as how I was missing class anyway, but he had something to do at his dad's. So there.) Somewhere around the
mid-point of the bridge, the inevitable happens and I stall the car. Not a big deal but before I had the chance to restart it this big, black GMC truck mows into my bumper.
Granted, it's not like he plowed into my bumper going 70mph or anything. He was stopped, just like I was, and thought that he could go because my brake lights went off. He might not have hit me hard enough to give me whiplash, but he certianly hit me hard enough to give me a damn good scare. (I almost ruined my pjs, which my grandma made for me and which I really, really like.) You can't stop on the bridge and we were both in the right lane so I figured that he would follow me off the bridge and pull over on the shoulder just before the River Road exit. What does he do instead? He
stops and lets 3-4 other cars cut in front of him so that I lose track of him. Then he disappears. With his headlights on high in the dark and rain, I couldn't even get his licence plate number. Plus, being seated so much higher up in a truck than in a sedan I don't have the faintest clue what the driver looks like. I never saw the driver (so I apologize for assuming that he's male).
My bumper's now pretty bunged up. Okay, it's scratched to shit. You would be too if you got kissed by a big, black GMC truck. It's plastic so it can't really be repainted. It would have to be replaced, something that would cost upwards of $600 to do. Since there's no structural damage, the only reason to replace the bumper would be cosmetic, waste of money as I see it. I might've gotten it replaced on the other guy's insurance, but seeing as how I was unable to obtain his information, that's not really an option.
Hey GMC truck driver. If you just happen to come across my blog by pressing the "Next Blog" button, just know that you gave a little Chinese girl in her pjs a nasty scare, caused pricey damage to her car and was too spineless to face up to the possible consequences. Poo on you.
posted by Joie! at
10:11 p.m.
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