(Obviously, this was taken long before he was my dad.)

It was rainy today--a misty depressing drizzle that feels like it's never going to end. I was hoping to get the last load of miscellaneous stuff from the old place today, but I can't do that until the weather clears up a bit, since there's some stuff I'll need to carry in the back of the truck.

I had a bit of "excitement" on the way home though. I was driving on the interstate, when I suddenly saw tail-lights go on ahead of me. And hard too--it looked like the people in front of me were standing on their brakes, and I was closing the distance rapidly. So, I leaned on my brakes as well, grateful that I have anti-lock brakes. As is my normal habit whenever I'm forced to brake hard, I glanced into my rear view mirror to see if anyone was going to plow into me, and saw the car behind me get clipped by the car behind it, and then I watched as the first car when spinning out of control, narrowly avoided being hit by another car, then went sliding and skidding through the grass median. It's a credit to the woman who was driving that she was able to get some control of it and keep the car from going into oncoming traffic.

So, anyway, I immediately pulled over, because it had looked very ugly and wanted to be sure no one was hurt. Plus, I figured I'd be Good Citizen and wait for the police, since I'd seen the entire thing. No one was hurt, fortunately, though the woman driving the car that had been hit was a bit shaky. The guy who'd clipped her pulled over also, and together we waited, in the drizzle, for a state trooper to show up. None of us had a cellphone (all week long I've been meaning to go get a new one! Figures!), but there was plenty of traffic, and we figured someone would call the accident in.

Twenty Five Minutes Later a state trooper finally arrived. It's not like we were in the middle of the boonies either; we were half a mile from an exit. As we waited ... and waited ... we kept saying, "It's a good thing no one was hurt!"

And I can give another plug for the value of seat belts now. The driver credited the fact that she was able to get control of her car to the seat belt she'd been wearing. Without it she would have been knocked around in the car, and much less able to concentrate on keeping her vehicle from going into the opposite lane.