I’m okay.

On the drive home from work, I’m slowing down for a stoplight and a bicyclist pops out between cars and hits the side of my car. He flipped off his bike and broke my driver side mirror. Let me tell you, time has never moved slower as I watched him come off his bike.

I stopped and began to pull off, opened my door as he stood up and picked up his bike.

“Are you okay?” I went to stand up out of the driver seat and felt the car begin to pull forward as my foot came off the brake, I had forgotten to shift gears to park and so I quickly sat down and regained control and pulled into the parking lot. I tried to play back the last thirty seconds, had I not been paying attention? How did this happen? Was it my fault? Is he okay? The questions raced through my mind as I pulled into a parking space at the 7-11.

As I shifted into park I checked my rearview and watched the guy bicycle away. I was perplexed by him leaving but relieved that he was okay.

Anyways, I parked the car and got out, looking around just trying to take stock of the situation. Two guys came over. One offered his info as witness to the guy riding off, he hadn’t seen the impact. And the other guy who came over kept telling me to wait for the police just in case someone called in my tag and assuring me it was alright and that he had seen the whole thing from the car next to me. He even said he tried to stop the guy from crossing but couldn’t.

I called 911 to be sure it had been called in, and waited. The chill hit quickly as the sun set and the cold front laid it on. I waited maybe 30 minutes before a cruiser pulled in with a young lady officer. We only chatted for a few minutes, I told her all the details but decided not to get a report. I took her card and she assured me that if it did somehow come back to me I was covered since I had waited for her and my 911 call was logged.

All in all, I only need to fix the mirror and hope the young guy is alright. I don’t know his story or why he rode off so quick but I’m calm and okay.

Can’t wait to call my mechanic and see if they can get a mirror for me, or to go hit the junk yards and see if I can easily find one.

photo credit: BullsEyesOrg

Tiger Woods is on a tear. He’s just absolutely unbelievable. This story describes the shear domination in all of its gory details. It’s inspirational. I mean, we’re watched a Legend truly just in the prime of his game and he’s, in all meanings of the phrase, unstoppable.

I’ve written before about my feelings for golf. I grew up caddying for dad, and I’ve played it some with very very limited success. Though as I grow older and more mature I find myself wanting to try again and believing that with a properly sized set of clubs and some lessons, I could come to enjoy the game. Though, I think even then I’d find that 18 holes was too long and that I much preferred just 9 holes.

However, I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t pay for the opportunity to just go with Tiger on eighteen holes of golf. To pick his brain in terms of his competitive nature and his drive to win. It would be an experience well worth its weight in gold.

There is also some level of intimidation and frustration which must be creeping over the Pro Golf circuit as other players discover just how frustrating it can be to be overshadowed by a legend.

Keep an eye on the golf news. I expect we’ll see Tiger continue to dominate. And by dominate, I mean demolish + raize + pillage + burn any course which stands in his way.

So I attended the Daytona 500 last night. Now, I’ve never attended a race before, I’ve sort of watched it on TV before. My two older brothers are both racing fans, my dad is a fan of all sports, and so I knew that if I didn’t enjoy the race I’d enjoy watching the race in person with my dad and my eldest brother.

I enjoyed the race, however my ADD kept tugging at my sleeve as I was in one place for over seven hours without internet access. It’s just… so… long. Thankfully I was wrong in a major way. The race is called the “Daytona 500″ and I thought that meant 500 laps. So with 500 laps, each lap being 2.5 miles, I thought I was settling in to watch someone drive 1250 miles. Thank GOD that I was wrong and that it was 200 laps at 2.5 miles for 500 miles.

I think there are a few big things new racing fans need to know about this race:

1)  The race itself is actually very exciting. Sure driving in a circle sounds boring but when they get three wide going around a turn at 190 miles per hour and you know someone is trying to gain mere feet so that they can nudge ahead of the car next to them.

2) You do get excited from crashes, not necessarily for the explosions and chaos, but because it allows the racers to return to a single clump of cars rather than spread out around the track. So with the yellow flag they recompress and as soon as the green flag waves they hit the gas and the race is on, everyone in the arena rises to their feet to watch them come around.

3) Traffic after the race is absolutely unbelievable. Truly, horribly, disgustingly bad. First, there’s traffic to get back to your car. Second, there’s traffic to get out of the parking lots. Third, there’s traffic on the interstates. It took us 5 hours to get from the race track, back to Orlando.  A trip which should have maybe taken 90 minutes took 3 times longer. Thankfully I slept most of the way.