Bam!

Yes, that's our little Beetle toad on the back of a tow truck. It's now sitting in the back lot of Fort Myers Collision. It may be hard to see, but the left front wheel is at a rather odd angle. There is some paint scraped off behind the tire. There is a ding in the door.

All this because we missed our turn to the beach, tried to get from the right lane at an intersection into the left turn lane. A woman coming up the highway, at a speed too fast, IMHO, failed to stop in time to miss us. Banged up our transaxle a bit, enough that we needed to be towed.

Fast thinking is needed in an accident situation. The first thing that concerned us was getting the cars out of traffic before some other person failed to stop. We limped through the intersection at 5 mph, even so, smoke started coming from our wheel. We turned into a parking lot, ironically between an insurance agency and a claims office. Next door was a golf shop, where I would have rather been. I was actually in there quite a few times, looking at phone books and borrowing a pen and paper. Since we had the bug detailed over Christmas, there was nothing left in it to write with or on.

After we got to the parking lot, I called 911 to get an officer on the scene. The driver of the other car, who was visibly upset, and we exchanged proofs of insurance and called our respective companies. A very nice, and efficient lady officer arrived and moved the paperwork along, called a tow for us. The other car was not damaged too seriously. Nobody was hurt.

Further irony, the other driver was going to the post office on her first day on the job at a personal injury law firm. Hopefully, that coincidence will not come back to bite us. She had an associate with her who was holding a box of mail.

A bit more fast thinking would have me taking pictures at the scene. After all, we were on our way to the dog beach to enjoy the sun and sand, and I did have my camera with me. I wasn't thinking that fast, though. I didn't think to take any pictures until we got our car to the body shop, the picture above.

A fortunate coincidence, I called Enterprise ("We'll come get you") to rent a car. It turned out that the rental agency was but two blocks away, so I walked over and rented a car, a shiny white Ford Taurus with 3000 miles on it. Not thinking, I took my cash with me, which Consuelo needed to pay the tow truck driver on the spot. But the rental was done, and I went back before they had the details worked out. The tow was $110.00. We had a grand total of $110.64 in our possession. Another irony.

Now, four days later, the insurance company has called to say they have approved the estimate by the repair shop, and the shop is proceeding with the repairs. Our car should be ready to travel again on February 2nd, or thereabouts.

Since we had no way to carry them, our bikes had to stay at the repair shop, too. We missed them today, as we're parked in Ruskin where ther beach is a nice bike ride away.

Neither of us was too busted up by this incident, though we did notice that we were distracted. We continued on to the dog beach after we spent 3 hours with the police, the tow truck, and the repair shop. Thumper had a great time. We did too.


A skilled navigator would have avoided this situation all together. We have had no accidents on the road because most of the time, I have a skilled navigator. On this day I was navigating, and was doing it way too slow. If I had been on the job, we would have arrived at the intersection in the left lane. I think I'd rather leave the navigating to Consuelo.