In Seattle, the Duck Rides You

Seattle, as does Philly, has at least one tour service that uses amphibious vehicles that drive on land and also go in the water. They are called Ride-the-Duck, and one of their land routes goes right by my apartment. Now, I honestly wish I was about to tell you some funny story about them almost running me over, or a cute girl falling out of the boat, or something. But thats not what happened. No, the stupid ------- boat actually ran me over today.

I was at the light at the corner of my apartment building, either stopped or stopping because it was red. I don't quite remember which, because my memory of that time period is overshadowed by the feeling of being hit from behind. By a boat. It actually hit me once--a nice love tap that woke me up and destroyed the park bench spoiler and pre-shattered the rear window. After riding a motorcycle for a few years, I've started to talk up my ability to see things coming and get out of the way in time. I did not see this coming. I don't even know where it came from. I mean, I knew there was one on the street. I think I passed it halfway down the block. I was stopped too close behind another car, so even if I could see the boat coming I still wouldn't have been able to get off the road in time. But I digress. There's more.

After the initial impact, during which I became both annoyed and incredulous that someone driving a big boat would rear end me...there was a second impact. I don't know what he was doing. Maybe he hit the gas. But the hull of the boat was actually making headway over my shrinking vehicle, and I became genuinely alarmed. Then the light turned green and I punched the throttle to get out of there, but it didn't really matter as the guy had found the brake pedal by that time anyway. If he hadn't, Jessica (my car) would probably be in a lot worse shape.

The guy, and some kind of captain/shift manager/wing commander-like guy who showed up a few minutes later, both apologized repeatedly without admiting fault. I was terse. I elected not to scream "WHAT THE !@#$ WERE YOU DOING?" which turned out to be a good choice, as there was a boatload of tourists snapping pictures of me and my crushed baby. I'm pretty sure it was their fault. I took a picture of the car in front of the duck ride in case anything goes even more wrong, though.

Thankfully the damage was all body damage, as far as I can tell. The engine, which is probably most of the cost, and the drivetrain and axles are all fine. Unthankfully, all of the damage was to my car. The boat appeared to have a thick, solid, unscratched metal surface.

I didn't call the police because I could still drive it, and I didn't want to sit around waiting for them to show up because I was actually on-call for work, which meant I needed to answer pages within 15 minutes or answer to my boss. So I just drove it in the gate of my building and spent half an hour cleaning glass shards off of and around Jessica. It is actually not terribly damaged. The tastefully ostentatious spoiler is sitting in the back seat, and the back window is now located in shards in a carboard box. Her trunk has gashes from the boats hull, but after cleaning it up it doesnt look too bad.

I'm just glad I'm not in the E.R. right now. Although, that would give me another shot at getting a cute nurses number. I've had nurse friends tell me that happens to them all the time in the E.R. in a tone of voice that suggested they found it annoying. I don't really care anymore. Girls who don't want to be hit on can just go live on another planet.



In other news, I just tried to print something from my web browser on my computer running Ubuntu Linux. I've actually recently upgraded Ubuntu, and it gave me a new version of the Firefox web browser. Apparently people who use this new and exciting version almost never need to change the margins when they print. I spent 20 minutes alternatively messing around with Firefox and searching the internet until I discovered the secret mouse-based incantations necessary to print with such nonstandard heathen margins that aren't a quarter inch. It actually brought back memories of using windows. Remember when you wanted to change some simple setting in windows, and to do it you had to use the mouse and open this graphical program, and then go into another window, maybe a tab, then use some non-intuitive interface to enter a value and probably restart the computer? I think my Ubuntu desktop is going to be like that soon.


Hmm...I just realized we have some kind of new light rail sytem in Seattle, and I might have to use it tomorrow to get to work. This could be interesting, as it sounds like they've tried to make paying your fare as complicated as possible.