Two posts in two days!

Just when I've been saying my life is pretty quiet, yesterday happened.  All in all, it was a long day!  It started with an appointment with my opthomologist in Las Vegas.  That was actually quiet; too quiet.  Got there about 12:30 and didn't get out until about 14:45.  Why it took so long is beyond me; but then again, doctors don't seem to care much about the patient's time do they?  The outcome was I'm good to go for another year at least.  So it is almost 16:00 by the time we make it back over the hump.

Our daughter missed my birthday and wanted to take us out to dinner to celebrate, at my age I don't know if you should celebrate another birthday or just another day above ground!  Anyway, she was only about 10 minutes behind our arrival.  We had a glass of wine and chatted then went to an early dinner at our local steak house.  The dinner was really quite good and we all enjoyed ourselves. 

On the way home we were perhaps a mile from the house when someone came right up behind us and started tail-gating us.  Hmmm.  My wife and I both encouraged our daughter to slow and let them past; amazingly she did so!  (Later she said that she only drives that carefully when her parents are along. LOL).  This little gray car zooms around us and tears off but within a couple hundred yards went off the road and slammed into a driveway culvert.  Smoke was issuing from the entire vehicle and some steam from the radiator.  It was quite a sight. 

Naturally we stopped and tried to see if the occupants were ok.  The car's airbag had deployed and the driver and only occupant, a woman, seemed unconscious.  The car was rapidly filling with smoke, the police later told us it was from the airbag.  Anyway we tried all the doors; only the right rear and the back hatch would open but it did clear the smoke out.  Meanwhile my wife was on the phone to the police & fire departments.  They had pretty good response time.  The deputy was there in four or five minutes I would guess.  He just checked that there was an accident and called for backup; we had two more police cars before the fire department showed up.  They couldn't get the door open to free the driver either so they got out the 'jaws of life' and cut the entire roof off the car!  It had rained today so the ditch was filled with water.  The poor guy cutting the top off got pretty wet!   (Photo, btw, is from our daughter's cell phone.)

The whole process was quite interesting but for us not so neat as we were left standing around in the cold for well over half an hour watching while we could have been nice and warm at home.  All the deputies did for most of that time was to watch the firemen at work.  They did look over what remained of the car after the driver was off to the hospital.   In the end one of the deputies gave us 1 page witness forms to fill out then we were told we could go.  They could have done that much earlier!  Anyway, it certainly gave us something new to talk about.

I haven't been able to see any report on the condition of the driver.  She was taken away moaning on a back-board and one of the deputies said her injuries were minor but I can't find conformation of that.  (We could hear her from 50 or 60 feet (20m) away.)