Me in ME: Day 15 and 16

A quick quiz to begin this post: What is slicker than ice?
Answer: Wet ice.

After the cold and icy weather over the two weeks that I've been in Maine, we were met Sunday night with a rain storm. The rain didn't melt the ice; it only made it slicker. I share this fact of physics because I had a minor fender bender in the parking lot at work due to these slick conditions. I was trying to park our rental car (with one of my coworkers in the car with me), when I tried to brake too quickly while I was turning. I wasn't going too fast, but I was going fast enough to break overcome the tiny static friction between my tire and the ice. So, as I'm trying to break and turn, the rear end of the Envoy swung around and struck the rear fender of a stationary Impala. This now marks two fender benders in my driving portfolio: both involving me and unoccupied parked cars. Wanting to do the right thing, I wrote a note explaining what happened and my contact number, and I put it in a plastic bag because it was still raining. After two days, the car hasn't moved, the note hasn't been read, and I haven't heard a word from the owner. I've asked around and noone seems to know who the owner is. I'm hoping they show up by the end of the week because I'm skipping town on Saturday.

Which brings me to my next announcement: we're finishing early!!! The preliminary plan is to fly home to Texas on Saturday. One hiccup with the travel plans is that there doesn't seem to be a flight from DFW to Waco that I'll be able to catch. So, it looks like my two coworkers and I will be driving a rental car back to Waco. I guess this won't be too bad since it's only about a 90 minute drive. However I get from the Metroplex to Waco, I should be playing some drums on Rock Band in 96 hours.

A note of irony: I spent about an hour Monday night working on another chapter of my online defensive driving course. And wouldn't you know it... the topic was driving in hazardous conditions, especially icy conditions.