All Banged Up

I was driving home from my friend Sei's birthday party last night along Highway 101 through San Francisco.  As traffic flowed over Potrero Hill, it came to a sudden halt, and I needed to brake quickly.  Unfortunately, the small truck behind me wasn't watching traffic as closely and rammed the back of my Protege.  I saw it coming a second before and tried to speed up, but I was too late.  There was a sudden bang.  The next thing I knew, I wasn't wearing my glasses anymore.  

As I groped for my glasses on the floor of the car near the gas petal, we pulled to the side of the freeway.  I stepped out of the car, and I noticed that one of San Francisco's finest happened to be right behind us.  She pulled over and asked the truck driver for his license, which he did not have.  I'm guessing he was an undocumented worker. The good news, however, was that he had documentation that the truck was insured by a janitorial company.  

The officer told me that we'd have to wait for the CHP to arrive on the scene, but she'd wait with me.   As we were chatting beside of the highway, the officer told me that she was from Oakland, too.  I was surprised that, as a SF police officer, she didn't live in San Francisco.  She jokingly said, "No, they don't let us live over here, too dangerous."

Soon after CHP arrived, and after giving my information, I was able to head back to Oakland.  The other driver without a license wasn't so lucky.  

So tomorrow, my faithful Protege needs to go to a body shop in Berkeley for some major body work.  I'm going to use this opportunity to fix some of the Proto's other scrapes and dings on my own dime.  All told, I'm feeling pretty fortunate that things worked out so well.  If I hadn't been able to get moving a little before the truck hit me, I think the damage would have been worse: