Crash!
by Patrick


Ok, so a week has absolutely flown by while in Paris and I can now admit it. I got in an accident in Ireland.

I had forgotten about the entire affair until last night when I was talking to my old friend, Todd Kenworth from my Boulder, Colorado days.

Todd lives on a boat with a small dog in Beaulieu sur Mer on the Cote d'Azur and we were trying to figure out how to see each other while we are in Europe. I was telling him where we had been so far, and was recounting what we thought of Dublin when it occurred to me that, yes, I had an accident. I was laughing so hard as I recounted the story that tears were squirting down my face and I could hardly speak.

But, I managed to spit it out...

"The tiny minivan looking vehicle will be fine, thank you," I said to the Hertz guy.

"But I have a new Range Rover that I'll give you for 480 euros, just 300 more euros than the Open Zafira that you reserved" he said in an Irish accent. "It's a rally d'acent car, dat one is," I thought I heard him say .

'Geez, thanks', I thought.

"No. Thank you. I don't feel like spending $600 extra for three days for leather seats," I replied warily.

"But, it's got a GPS system, the Opel's is broken, and it won't fit all of your luggage," he pressed. "Ok, I'll give it to you for 400 euros, but 'dat's it."

"Ok", I said weakly, unable to make the psychological step all at once from the Four Seasons Dublin to a miniature minivan. "But will this take long? My kids are getting restless," I pleaded while Declan banged some metal toy behind me in a way that it was not supposed to be played with.

"No, no. I've got it right here," he said, 30 minutes before he actually had it right there.

I was about to pull the plug on the whole upgrade from the miniature minivan idea, but there was suddenly a deafening clang, clang, clanging behind me. I turned and saw Ellie stumbling back into the velvet ropes delineating the customer queue and dragging one of the chrome posts that held it up, across the tiled floor of the cavernous rental car center. Kiki was sitting upside down on own of the couches with her dirty shoes resting where tamer customers normally put their heads. And Declan was stumbling towards Ellie off balance because the punch that he threw at her went wide as she deftly back pedaled from his reach (and into the ropes).

Horrified, I shoved them outside to wait for the car. It came. Right-hand drive. And big. Really big. At least in comparison to the lilliputian Dublin streets.

We all piled in.

Kiki said, "Can you dwive this caw, daddy?"

"Of course," I replied confidently. "I lived in SOUTH AFRICA." Bloody great.

I was very much pre-occupied with kids that were breaking down, being late for our late check-out at the hotel, figuring out what to do with the kids before we picked up Katie to drive out to the country, how to drive from Hertz to the hotel to get our bags, which lane to stay in when making a turn, and, most importantly, where the hell I was going to get my mocha.

Earlier in the day while running, I ran by a nice looking cafe in Sandymount, and decided that I was going to attempt to find it for my coffee.

After 20 minutes, I found it. It was on a very narrow street made narrower by parked cars and a sidewalk filled with Irish citizens enjoying their coffees and sausages.

I slowly cruised by the cafe in the Range Rover like a big Grouper fish, while cars coming the opposite direction had to wait for me to pass so that they could squeeze by.

I tried to park once, but chickened out. Right hand drive plus big car plus parallel parking in a tight spot posed a bigger challenge than I was prepared for.

It occurred to me that Ellie, who has shown remarkable strides in maturity on this trip, could get it for me!

I made another pass. This time, I cruised by much slower. And stopped to let Ellie out.

Only I didn't stop. The car kept moving forward and I was too green to understand what the beeping sound was (it was the car's fancy proximity sensor freaking out).

Suddenly, with the windows down, three kids in the car, and a brand new Range Rover reluctantly rented two hours prior, I nailed a Ford parked in front of the cafe with its owner sitting at a table nearby.

The Range Rover was so big, and the Ford so small, that even though I merely crawled into it, the Ford lept forward and hit another parked car in front of it. A Mini Cooper. Also parked in front of its owner.

And I yelled as loud as my very loud voice could yell, the "s" word, in an anguished American accent for all to hear.

A very thick silence descended upon all the people on the street and in the Range Rover. Then Kiki spoke again, "Are you going to go to jail?"

"I don't think so," I said. "But, it's going to cost a lot of money."

Luckily, the damage to the Range Rover was limited to some paint scrapes. The Ford and the Mini will need new bumpers and the Ford will need a new fender.

Everybody, including the Garda (Irish police) were very nice and gracious. I'm sure that I wasn't the first Yank to have trouble with driving on the left hand side of the road.

When I returned the Range Rover to Hertz Dublin Airport, the woman at the return lane basically jotted my name down on a long list of names and radioed her manager at the airport office with words to the effect that 'we got another one'.

I approached the manager at the desk who informed me that I would be responsible for the damage to the Range Rover, but that the insurance that I had bought for the first time in my car renting lifetime would pay for the other damage.

Maybe the luck of the Irish was with me after all.

The bill comes in a few days. Knock on wood.