Car accident... again!

About two week ago I was outside, walking in the dark. I was just walking along the road, under the street lamps when I had an idea. I turned around and just stared down the stretch of road ahead, than I sat on the rail by the road and waited. There was a car coming towards me from my right side, on the opposite side of the road. It was doing about 80 km/h. I watched as it hit the brakes, steered itself halfway of the road and then back on the road at a disturbing angle, now heading straight for me. The car didn’t hit me because this was my car, and I was at the wheel, and I wonder about that angle.

What I was doing there, at that rail, was processing. I have a very vivid imagination, and it’s quite helpful sometimes.

The day before, I and a friend of mine sat wrapped in blankets, waiting for an ambulance with people all around us, trying to keep us calm. We experienced shock, chest pain caused by seatbelts, blurred vision, dizziness and trembling. We had our torsos x-rayed and my head scanned. We were fine. My parents’ car had relatively little damage that paled to insignificance when compared to the car I hit. When we had stepped out of the car and looked back we saw something straight out of your worst nightmare. The other car had crossed the road and was now on its side up against a rock. On top of it was a man, trying to get his wife and baby out with the help of some bystanders. Behind me, from one of the cars that had stopped, loud, happy music was playing. Someone said to go turn it off and someone did. It was surreal. It still is. The car was trashed. In the words of the guy who salvaged it: it used to be a station wagon, but you can’t really tell. Somehow, all three of them made it out with only minor injuries from what I’m hearing. Wanting to make myself useful and just do something, anything, I started to collect debris from the road. Eventually, we settled in the open boot of the car. People came to talk to us. We talked to a few people who had witnessed the accident, and they were all in agreement that this was not my fault. This was my initial feeling about it too, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I had made it worse than I had to be. Paramedics and the police came to ask us questions. There was still a big open hole in this case. There had been a third car involved.

Some said it was dark, others said it was gray or silver. I said it was smaller than the ambulance, but bigger than the station wagon I was driving. Others say it was an SUV. Some say I should have checked it’s registration number, and I say I don’t know how on earth they imagine I would have time for that when all my brainpower was better spent avoiding a head on collision. The police said it was heading west and was on the spot at approximately 11.40, just like the rest of us. Witnesses said it took off. Salvagers say I’m positively screwed because I managed not to hit it so it has no damage that proves it was involved. We all agree it set the accident in motion.

Before this all went down. We had been heading east, talking about all kinds of different things, but at some point our conversation shifted to reckless driving and specifically overtaking. You know what they say: Speak of the devil! Suddenly our topic of choice was all up in our faces. Someone who remains unknown had decided it was a jolly good idea to overtake another car without checking for oncoming traffic. Had it bothered, it would have spotted a bright blue car that was not easy to miss and several other cars that followed. It was well into my lane before realizing it had made a mistake. There was nothing for me to do except hit the brakes and get my car out of the way. I took it off the road just far enough to miss the troublemaker without going all the way off and into the mountainside. This was a dangerous move, but still better than the option. However, what happened next is not quite clear, but I lost control of my car, trying to get it back on the road. There was a big risk of us crashing into the rocks had I not done so, but I hadn’t meant for it to get as far back into the road as it did. It hit the other car in the side. I only saw it just before I hit it. No matter how bad I feel I don’t think I could have done much besides what I did. I remember wondering how on earth this could happen again. It has only been 3 months since my beloved Hyundai Getz was rear ended. But I guess the doctor was right: “ni har haft tur i otur” (Swedish).

The media was on to it before we even made it to the hospital. The links below are to local media (NRK Sfj, Sunnmørsposten and Fjordingen) and it’s all in Norwegian (Nynorsk).

NRK Sfj: "Etterlyser bilar etter ulykke"

NRK Sfj: "Jaktar på bilførar etter ulykke"

Sunnmørsposten: "Mørk SUV etterlyst etter ulukke"

Fjordingen: "Stygg trafikkulukke i Markane"

Since I started writing this I have been in touch with the police, since this is under investigation. They’ve somehow managed to track down the missing car.

 No matter how stressful this has been, I couldn’t help but enjoy being interviewed by the police (formally as a suspect, even though they expect I will be cleared), having my rights explained to me and being informed of the benefits of admitting, should I be guilty. This is something you see on TV, not a situation I ever expected to find myself in. Ever since, I have grasped any excuse to inform everyone that their allowed to withhold information but not allowed to lie and of what would be required to get a reduced punishment :D Yes, I am indeed very weird.

“Ingenting er så galt at det ikkje er godt for noe”

Here's what happened (the blue car is me):

Crossing my path

Sometimes, when I am driving, I think too much. I see trees, buildings and people. People walking, talking, about to cross the road and... wait a sec! CROSSING THE ROAD?! So I hit the brakes and as of yet, I have always done so in time. I feel stupid and sorry so I usually end up with a funny expression, like an assembly of pieces from different expressions. I like to call it my apologetic smile. Mostly when I abstain from... running over people, and do so with a good margin and clear intent, they hardly look in my direction. However, my funny grimace seems to do wonders. People are usually watching me intently at this point. I suppose they’re making sure they’re not about to die with tire marks across their face and an imprint of an italic H for Hyundai on their side. Also, when they have established that they will live, they want to know if I’m half asleep or just your average asshole. Anyway, they all seem to be content with the amount of genuine remorse displayed across my face. After all, I am about as hard to read as a lone neon sign in the dark. Most smile, some even wave. I’ve wondered a lot about this.

 Maybe it’s just my face... I think it looks something like this:   

This is how I imagine that I look, but I don’t really know. My face is simply out of my hands and I’ve given up trying to control it a long time ago. The more I try to look normal, the stranger I look. Plain and simple. I talked about my lack of talent with a friend of mine once, to try to sort it out, but it pretty much stranded as we couldn’t really be sure if she was really bad at reading facial expressions, or I was really bad at making them. Still, it is pretty well established that my face never look the way I intend for it to look. The expression in question probably looks a bit like I’m stuck in the process of changing it. Like when you’re on the internet and your browser is crashing, while you were trying to synchronise your iPod with iTunes, but you got so fed up with waiting for that piece of shit program to respond (I’m growing old here!), so you started Spotify, but Spotify is desperate to highjack your iPod and immediately picks a fight with iTunes. Also you might have forgotten to shut down Photoshop. BAM! System failure! This is basically what happens to my face. The muscles in my face just don’t understand why I would want to smile while feeling so miserably ashamed. I would make a terrible actor to say the least.

 At some point the hang up resolves itself, and I remember not to try to make my face do anything it doesn’t want to.

Addicted

Looking away, looking away, looking away! But, no. I have to look. What is it now? I tip my head to the side and my eyes pan to the left to see what’s on. I don’t know why I tilt my head, but I very often do. Like it helps me think, or see straight, or not straight. Maybe that’s it. The TV is what’s on. I try not to look, and when I look I try not to care. It’s always the same.

“Does your blond hair look a bit yellow? This is the shampoo for you!”.  I look at the colours, the lights, the pretty faces on the screen. The shampoo is purple… I love purple. I think to myself: “Yes, that is the shampoo for me”. I hadn’t realized it before, but now I don’t know how I could be so blind! People are always making fun of my hair, and I thought I understood what they were getting at, but I see now that it is much worse then I realized. Thinking back to my reflection in the mirror this morning I can now see that my blond hair does indeed have a yellow glow to it. I didn’t realize it was a problem. Good thing I turned on the TV so I could be enlightened. Now I can see how bad it is so I can finally do something about it. I better go get that shampoo! I’m sure it will all be good and everybody will love it! I grab my wallet and jump out of my chair. I’m going shopping! But first I better put something on my head. I don’t want to walk around looking like a dandelion with my bright yellow hair. I grab a hat, pull it down over my ears (even if it isn’t the latest fashion ), duck under the radar and sprint for the door. Half way there I spot a familiar shape in my peripheral vision and stop. I meet my own eyes in the mirror. The bewildered look in my eyes  is just like expected, but wait a minute… the yellow lion look in my head is gone. My hair is dark brown… right. I sigh, and look down.  What was I thinking?! There is no hope for me! I hunch my back and lurk back to the TV, maybe it has something else for me.

See? Hopeless! ;)

Eyes

This is the same drawing I posted a while ago and now I’ve changed the eyes a bit to try to make them more deep and “alive”. I think they look much better now :)

Here’s the before picture:

The last one is scanned, that’s why the colours are more even. 

Drawings

I drew this first one a while ago. Not happy with the eyes so I think I’m going to try to fix it.

 The next one I finished a few days ago. This picture sort of just popped into my head so I sketched it and then left it for weeks, but I finally finished it. Also, it’s pretty big (about 80 x 60 cm).

Sorry if the quality is poor as I downloaded them from my own Facebook-page. Both are drawn with pen and permanent markers. The last one looks a bit grey on my laptop screen, but it looked ok when I adjusted it on another computer, so I’m getting a bit frustrated with computers and digital images.

Roadtrip

I and some friends went on a roadtrip yesterday at Stadlandet, Norway.

Of course, all the roads around here is of great quality...

Yeah... maybe not. Notice the bullet holes in the sign.

Hoddevik. This place has more surfers than locals pretty much any time of year it seems.

Next stop was Ervik. Here we went for a long walk.

We even found an underground tunnel! At first we thought it might be a mine of sorts, but it is probably from the Second World War. 

We decided to have a look inside. We walked all the way to the light in the other end.

It took a while as I have a problem with dark, enclosed spaces, and was too busy freaking out to remember to walk.

The view on the other side was nice and so was my little personal victory, but I still climbed the fence on the other side, keen to see if it was possible to climb back over the top. It was, but this idea didn’t hit home with Janne, and I figured I had to follow her back through the tunnel. It wouldn’t be very nice to make her go back on her own.

On our way back down, we ran into some locals.

One of them was a bit of an outsider with the others goats and therefore took interest in us.

We also went to Vestkapp. The road was supposed to still be closed for the winter, but  someone had removed the stuff that was blocking the road. Very nice, 360 degree view for miles :D

P-tex burns

A while ago I learned something new. Getting melted p-tex on your skin is not a good idea... surprise, surprise. I was fixing my snowboard and I managed to get a drop of the burning stuff on my hand. It burned a little bit, and I figured that since it looks like melt glue sticks the effect was probably similar. No big deal. So I got on with dripping it on my board. When I was finished, I decided I should probably try to get it off my skin. Upon closer inspection, this was not like melt glue at all.

P-tex is dangerous stuff I tell you! Before I ripped the shit off, I was already contemplating the outcome. Would I survive? The strange substance was merged to my skin so tight it looked like it was planning to hang around for awhile. Ripping it off might be a bad idea. Should I just let it stay there? I thought about it for a second, but what did I really know about it’s intentions? Why had it stuck to my skin? Was it just planning to slowly drain my energy till I faded away or would it perhaps turn me into some cool kid and have me say mean stuff to people?! Things don’t just happen to merge with your skin for no good reason! At this point I was so overtaken by fear that I simply could not stand to look at it for another second. I could feel it looking at me. Oh my God! Maybe this is what it wants. It wants me to look at it so it can hypnotise me. I was shaking. I curled up in a tight ball and placed the “thing” as far away from me as possible... which is as far away as you can possible place yourself from yourself. Left arm outstretched, I can feel it burning, digging in. I’m gonna die, gonna die, gonna die... wait... what is that? I looked up, sure to find that some alien form had immerged from my finger and is about to take me away. But I see nothing. Not even an android. Unless my phone counts. Down on the ground I finally spot a pair of yellow eyes looking at me. The eyes of the devil are sparkling with evil and bloodlust. The thing jumps at me, eager to inspect the little white dot on my finger .The Golden Cat doesn’t degrade herself to talking, but she doesn’t need to. Her expression says it all: “What a pathetic little girl! What have you done to yourself now?”. I’m sure that cat is possessed by a demon, so I find her interest in this matter very disturbing. This settles it! I pull my arm away from the little predator and quickly tear the parasite from my finger. The thing didn’t give up without a fight, but I was determined. The thing came off, but not without taking a good chunk of my hand with it. I am now sure I will be crippled for the rest of my life. I’m close to tears as I stare at the empty space where I’ve lost at least like a square cm of the outer layer of skin... what will I do without it? I’m trembling uncontrollably, regretting my rash actions. But there is no time for my sorrow at this point. I look up again, realizing I’ve just exposed my bloody insides in the presence of a set of sharp teeth. The Golden cat is watching me still, pupils dilated. She’s getting ready to jump again, but I beat her to it. I jump from my chair and sprint trough the cold spring evening, hoping to make it to the front door in time. As I slip through the door, realizing I’ve won, I look back. The Golden Cat is sitting very still in that same spot, still watching me. She’ll get me later, I’m sure.

“Why problem make, when you no problem have?”

There will be no more fixing my board. It was damaged in the car accident a few weeks ago and now I’ve finally gotten the insurance payout, so I’m on the lookout for a new one :)