Glass

This is a picture of the office wall closest to my head at work.  That's a bag full of the Mustang glass from the accident, including the piece I picked out from between my teeth (despite assurances from everyone it wasn't there) after being in a coma.  Any time I'm feeling a bit ornery at work, these pieces of glass do a great job of getting me back to a state of calm.  There's not much anyone can do that's worse than the accident.

I'm not generally the type to need mementos (an organized serial killer type).  Most days I'm fairly well grounded in the larger scheme of things.  But I find these surprisingly useful.  They remind me of the hospital and how miserable I felt, both physically and mentally, worrying about my family and whether I'd be bicycling and/or walking and trying not to hurt.  Puts everything else in perspective: everything else in a space relative to the accident.  On a continuum, that pushes everything else to the far end of the spectrum, or makes the spectrum so large that they appear to be stuffed up against the end for meaningless minutia.

Squashed

While we were at the impound lot signing the car over to the insurance company and picking up personal effects, we took some pictures of the Mustang.  This doesn't quite capture how messed up it is because virtually every electronic bit in the front area was busted, and other parts in the "cab" were all bent.  But it's a nice series for capturing the damage to the driver's side, where I was sitting and how that spilled over to the hood and rear panel.

Side photo.  You can see where the other car's bumper impacted.


Closer up.  Note all the pieces in the back seat from the rest of the car.


The front of the car.


The impact shattered all the loose bits.


Looking at the damage, I'm think I'm lucky to be alive.  If I had still been driving the plastic Saturn, I think more of the impact would have gone into me directly instead of being distributed across the body of the car.