Things that go "bump"

I came back from lunch yesterday to find the intersection in front of my office blocked by a police car missing its front bumper and an SUV with a crushed driver's door. Accident, or the end of a police pursuit I wondered. Apparently it was an inexperienced driver in the police cruiser that was responsible.

This morning I cycled to my dentist for a cleaning (parking is always hard, so it's faster to get there slower). Again an intersection was blocked by a traffic accident. In this case a large truck had crushed the front of a small sedan. It looked fairly recent, but Sheryl told me that she'd seen a news report about it. They had collided hours earlier, at about 5:00 AM! It looked like one of them had tried to run a red light. I don't think there were any serious injuries, but they had apparently needed to cut the car open to get the driver out... The intersection had a surreal look to it as traffic was being re-routed over a block back in all directions, so the actual intersection was eerily deserted except for the collided vehicles.

Bad things are supposed to happen in threes, so perhaps the third thing happened first. A week ago as I was walking to the office I noticed one of our receptionists on her bike heading the same way. I said "Hi" and then noticed a gauze bandage on her chin and blood down the front of her jacket. She'd been side-swiped by a car about ten minutes before and had been sent flying. She was a bit numb, but was trying to complete her journey after having being attended to by the EMTs. I walked with her the rest of the way. Of course she ended up taking a few days off to recover from the bruising that soon appeared.

Oh, there was one final "crash". As my tooth cleaning was ending I realised that my brother-in-law was sitting in the next chair!

Listening to: Blame It On Cain by Elvis Costello from My Aim Is True.