a good day to stay home

I was already in bed before I started messing with this particular post. My curiosity about whether I could get the pictures off my phone was keeping me awake, so I decided to just get up and blog. You deserve to hear about our afternoon.

Ryan and I found out that today was a bad day to be on the roads of Portland. We ran a "quick" errand to the bank and then were on our way to the library when we heard a loud popping sound. I looked in the direction of the noise and saw two cars spinning opposite each other. I called 9-1-1 and reported the accident on our way to the library.

We parked at Advance Auto Parts and walked up the hill to see the accident up close. As we got there, I was kicking myself for not grabbing my camera. Who can predict these things though? Anyway, my cell phone camera took these. The guy in the red car apparently caused this head-on collision and then after the accident tossed something down the bank on the other side of the road. The police assumed it was drugs and brought a drug-sniffing golden retriever to look for it. The upstanding citizen also had a few warrants out for his arrest, so he spent the whole time we were there being interrogated from the back of the squad car.

This is the truck he hit. It knocked the front left wheel off of both vehicles. The person in the truck went to the hospital. I was surprised they fared worse than the driver of the little car.

As we were walking away from the first accident, we noticed sirens heading south on 109. As we got back in front of the bank again, we saw this accident, another head-on collision. I don't know which vehicle caused this one. There was a BIG lady in the black truck and four people in the little car. We watched them use the Jaws of Life to cut the posts on the car after they busted the windshield in with an axe.

Vanderbilt's Life Flight helicopter picked up the lady in the truck. They made all of us leave who hadn't actually witnessed the accident. We saw another helicopter fly in a little after that.

Anyway, Ryan was pretty ready to leave by the time they asked us to. I assured him that I had lots of experience in chasing accidents, but he didn't seem too sure. Oh well.