Beyond Timbuktu: Cars and Cold

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Cars and Cold

This weekend is our first taste of winter. The wind switched directions and is blowing down from Russia. I had to bring in the last of the peppers. Even the ponds froze! Warmer air is on its way back up though. On Monday we had a really nice birthday celebration. Went to Kapadokya, a local restaurant, for some pizza.

On Wednesday we were driving back from the hardware store to pick the girls up from school. The road we took back was narrow, and apparently had recently become a one-way. I didn't see the sign, and was driving the wrong way. We met a car coming from the correct direction, and to my surprise, the driver did not use the pull out next to him so that we could pass by. He just stopped in front of our car, so I stopped too. He have us an angry look and then tried to get around us, driving into the back corner of our car, scraping along the whole side of his car. Normally when you feel your car hit something you instantly stop.

When he got out of the car he blamed us for causing the accident as it was a one way and demanded money to fix his car. So we called the police. The officer was quite friendly, and said just because you break a traffic rule doesn't mean you cause an accident, and confirmed my point that from the damage pattern it was clear that our story was true - we couldn't have been moving if just the back corner of our car was scraped and the whole side of his was, even though the other driver claimed we were moving too. While we were standing there another car drove past from the wrong direction.

The officer also said he wasn't there to assign blame, that was up to the insurance companies. Naomi spent the afternoon sorting out all the paperwork. What a headache. The next morning, she was grading some tests and recognized the last name of one of her students. She checked the address, and it turns out the father was the name on the accident report.