Redneck Rig

Our bumper lying on the street at Temple Square
You can't really see the wires and things poking out everywhere in this picture. Our car looks worse in daylight.

After enjoying a pleasant Saturday afternoon tying up some loose ends with our Christmas shopping and visiting Temple Square to show Taj the lights, we stopped at 7-Eleven in Salt Lake for "Coke in the Bottle." Brannon said he'd been craving it all day, so I figured I might as well get a Redbox movie while we were there to make a perfect end to a perfect day. I guess that's where our "perfect day" stopped being so perfect. We were weaving our way through downtown Salt Lake City traffic, two stop lights away from being on the road to home, sipping our Coke out of glass bottles like a couple of big city yuppies when we found ourselves waiting to turn right at a red light. While we were waiting a HUGE fire truck pulled up rather closely beside us, in a lane that also turned right. Red light turned to green and both we and the fire truck ventured to make the right turn when all of a sudden Brannon hit the brakes and I screamed as I watched and felt us get hit by the back end of the fire truck. The fire truck kept right on driving and Brannon made to pursue them when we heard this awful scraping of metal sound. Brannon pulled over and we got out to find our bumper was literally hanging by a thread. A single touch from Brannon sent the whole thing bouncing across the pavement. Then out of nowhere a nice man who saw the accident happen was coming towards us with another piece of our car in his arms. All I could do was laugh at that point and breath a sigh of relief when I saw the fire truck had pulled over just up the road. The driver of the truck was like "Man we didn't even know we hit you until we looked in our mirrors and saw your bumper flying off!" Yeah well, we didn't know our bumper was flying off until we heard it dragging on the blacktop. I think I took it better than Brannon did. Those nerves of his kicked in and he was buzzing around from firefighter to police officer for the entire 2 1/2 hours it took for them to take pictures and do their reports on the accident. Basically I was trapped in the car with Taj the two-year-old for almost three hours. At least the firefighters were kind enough to give me a break and show Taj the fire truck and let him try on their helmets. They even bought us some hot chocolate. I'm telling you people, getting hit by a state owned vehicle is a big no-no, especially if you have plans to watch that Redbox movie. Turns out because a state vehicle was involved in the accident not only did we have to wait for the fire department to investigate, we had to wait for a city police officer, a crime scene unit, and an independent police party to investigate as well. It was almost midnight when we got home. At least Taj fell asleep on the way! It looks like I'm driving a redneck rig, given the missing bumper and driver's side wheelwell. Brannon couldn't believe that I actually drove it to the post office today. Hey, I'm not embarrassed in the least...redneck blood runs deep in my veins. At least people clear out of my way when they see me coming. They figure I'm the one who made the bumper come off and they don't want me knocking theirs off too! Don't worry people, it's not me you have to look out for, it's those fire trucks!