Saturday afternoon, Amanda and I were headed to the East Bay from SF. We were approaching the bridge when the traffic slowed down (even more than it usually does.) Eventually, a CHP motorcycle passed by, and we noticed a car accident on the side of the freeway. A car was spun around the wrong direction, and one of its windows was shattered. Doing my passenger rubbernecking duty, I noticed someone standing outside the car, and as we passed by, I said to Amanda, “Is that Heather?” Amanda looked too and realized that it was indeed her friend Heather. We didn’t pull over since the police were there, but once we got on the bridge, I texted Heather with something like, “We think we saw you on the side of the freeway. Hope you’re okay. Let us know if we can do anything.” Once we arrived in Berkeley, we got a call from Heather, who was getting her car towed to a shop in SF. When she was driving on the freeway, a big piece of wood fell off a truck in front of her, and when she swerved to avoid it, she lost control of the car and hit the guardrail.

She sounded really shaken up, so we all piled into a car and picked her up from the shop so we could take her to the hospital to get checked out. (As an aside, Steven Liu, the owner of the shop, Autobody Garage, was really nice. First off, he came from home to open up the shop on a Sunday so that Heather could tow the car there, then sat with her while we were on our way, gave her water, and his wife (?) brought her a bag of ice for her knee. Based on the 16 5-star reviews on Yelp, I know where to go when my car needs body work.)

Anyway, we ended up taking her back to the East Bay to go to the ER, and after several hours there, it turns out she had a broken kneecap. It was quite a mess, but all things considered, it could have been a lot worse. I’m just glad we happened to be passing by…

My brother Arthur talking about his car, which was damaged in a minor accident on Christmas Eve: “My car is like a beautiful woman. And then she smiles and you realize she’s missing her two front teeth.”

That’s about as much as my brother got out before his car hit the barrier on the side of the highway. We’re all fine (me, my brother, his wife, and their dog were in the car at the time,) if not a little shaken up. We were driving back to Arlington from my Aunt’s house in Columbia, Maryland in my brother’s car. It had started snowing earlier in the night, and since he has a rear-wheel-drive car, it was slipping a little in the snow. But we were doing okay until we were on the highway, going about 30 MPH, when all of the sudden the car just started doing a slow skid, and hit the barrier. His bumper was a little cracked, but it was an excellent reminder of why seatbelts were invented, as well as cell phones. We called my sister, who was in another car (a Jeep) with our parents, so they turned around, met us up on the side of the highway, and we went back to my Aunt’s house. My brother left his car there for the night, and all six of us squeezed into the Jeep for a very crowded car ride back home, with the dog on our laps to keep us warm. Other than that minor mishap, the night was filled with good food, good tea, and good conversation. Good times, as they say.

Merry Christmas!