End of an Era

So I'm thirty.

Now enough about that.

If you read my old blog you know about my stint/dream of being a race car driver. At 3:35am, March 5th 2008 the last remnant of that dream was laid to rest. Moments before that exact time a man some ten blocks away from my house was attempting to steal a car. His efforts were thwarted but he wasn't done causing damage for the night. He jumped in his car (not really his car, the vehicle he was driving was also stole, and ironically a little black Civic CRX). He proceeded to drive down Moraga toward the ocean at speeds well beyond reasonable for our neighborhood. When he reached 46th ave (my street) he ran his stop sign and was hit by a car traveling along 46th ave (given the time of day and the tendencies of 46th ave drivers, this car was probably moving rather quickly as well). Our car thief spun out of control.

Even earlier than night I was out playing basketball. I was playing in Pacifica so I had to drive there. Robyn was working late since I wasn't going to be home anyway. I managed to get home before her (around 10pm) and the street was full of cars and for some strange reason I decided to let Robyn have the drive-way. So I parked my little black Honda CRX on the corner of 46th and Moraga, a place I've never parked the car before, usually it's in the drive way, in the garage or directly in front of the house. Robyn came home and parked our "real" car, our car we drive all the time and owe money on safely in the drive way.

Like I was saying, the car thief, he spun out of control. The first car he hit was my little identical black CRX. He smashed into the front drivers side tire breaking it off from the axle, breaking the drivers side window and part of the front window, removed the side mirror and crushed the door. From there he spun some more and managed to hit three other cars. My car will no longer start and even if it did it wouldn't move anyway. The thief then exited his stolen vehicle and disappeared into the night. C'est la vie.

At three thirty in the morning Robyn and I both sat up in bed. She said, "what was that?" I said, "it sounded like a car accident." Given the arrangement of stop signs in our neighborhood we knew it would only be a matter of time before a major accident happened at the corner of 46th and Moraga, we usually hear people honking at that intersection or the squealing of tires and breaks daily. So when we went to the front window both of our eyes went directly to that corner and saw nothing. However, parked in front of our house was a car, with one headlight out. Two men were standing outside talking on their cellphones looking back at that same corner. Another man came out of a house and asked if they were alright. They said they were cool. We assumed they were calling the police, but were still confused by what had happened. For the amount of noise we heard there was surprising little damage or activity in the surrounding houses or street. It was almost as if nothing had happened. To fully understand you must realize that the four other damaged cars, including mine, are around the corner from our house so we couldn't see what had happened over there.

One of the men out front of our house walked away from the car and never came back, the other got back in the car and sped off.

For reasons I can't really explain we decided to go back to bed. There we laid asking each other, "what just happened?" It was impossible to go back to sleep. And it would have been a waste of time anyway because around 4:30am the SF PD arrived at our door and wanted to know if I lived there and if I owned a black CRX. I knew as soon as I heard the knock on the door my car had been damaged. Luckily mine was the only one of the cars that took enough damage that it won't start or move anymore. The other cars were definitely hurt but they at least still worked. Also, fortunately, no one was hurt.

Later that morning I called my insurance company, took some pictures of the damage, called a junk yard and scheduled a tow truck to come take the car away (they're giving me $150).

To add insult to injury the car is still parked out side and will probably be ticketed in the next hour for being in a street sweeping spot and last night someone got into the car and took everything of any value out of it (an amp and speakers).

Although I'm not overly broken up about losing the car the incident put me in a weird mood. I was on edge all day and I finally figured out what it was that was bothering me. For lack of better words I felt, "at risk." That at any second something random could happen to hurt me or the ones I love. I was also sensitive to noises yesterday as well. I started assigning importance to every sound I heard. The sharp S's and T's of the woman sitting next to me that I could hear over my headphones. Every honking horn, squeaking breaks, slamming doors was a sign of trouble. The way the man walking toward us let his feet drag across the pavement. The homeless people talking to themselves seemed more threatening than usual.

Today I feel better. I guess it's good to be thirty.