This just in...

Angela and I are currently shaking in our boots after a near death experience.  We were walking Mazzy down the sidewalk after a nice dinner at Matt and Jeans.  Suddenly, we hear a Ford Explorer tearing up the hill towards us to a "T" intersection, it crests the hill at 45 mph, the front tires leave the ground for an instant like a scene from "Bullet", and then it pile drives a parked car into a tree 15 feet in front of us.  My first reaction is to duck behind a car and call 911 because I'm thinking the driver is either on drugs or being chased by drug addicts, so I do just that.  Meanwhile Angela chases after Mazzy who has gone tearing down the street headed for home.  She saw Death's dark shadow and took off like one of Lance Mackey's lead dogs.

Before I can even connect through to 911 the car suddenly roars back to life, backs up, and the driver floors it again and goes screaming past me to another intersection and around the corner.  I connect through to 911 and tell them accident #2 is on the way.  Sure enough, 10 minutes later we hear an ambulance and 3 police cars tear past us.  The driver made it through 2 more intersections before coming to another "T" intersection where she bounced off another parked car and drove into someone's house.  She was then loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital, no one else was injured.  

We stood there in awe of the carnage as neighbors came out and talked to us.  A few minutes later another officer pulled up and took my report, it was an open and shut case because the license plate of the hit and run vehicle was laying at my feet and the hit and run driver was laying in the hospital.  The parked car had all its windows broken out, the rear axle broke and the passenger door was completely caved in.  Ironically there was an anti-theft "Club" in the steering wheel so the car could not be stolen.  Here's a shot I took while the officer inspected the damage: Note the passenger door is gone and the vehicle is firmly wrapped around a eucalyptus tree.

10 seconds later and we would have been between the car and the tree, 10 seconds earlier and we would still have been in the middle of the street, and everyone was telling us how dangerous Alaska must be over dinner.  A little too ironic, don't you think?

Now Mazzy is curled up beside the bed as close as she can get in a place she never sleeps and snoring like her life depends on it.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better...