vegas
It was the weekend of November 22-26 (American Thanksgiving) and a large group of us decided to go to Vegas for the long weekend. One of our plans was to avoid the rush hour traffic by leaving early Thursday morning from Sunnyvale with the plan on arriving in Las Vegas by about midday. This would turn out to be a huge mistake. We left Sunnyvale early in the morning (as planned) and started driving on the highway in our rented Camry. All was well for a while until we ended up in horrible car crash out in the middle of the mojave desert. The details to this day are a little sketchy to me as I was sitting in the back of the car watching American Pie II on KL's laptop. All I remember is feeling a huge bump, seeing black, and smelling smoke coming from our car. It felt like the car was rotating around. I remember yelling 'oh my god'. Soon the car came to a stop and the laptop jumped from KL's lap into mine. The airbags went off and fortunately nobody was hurt. Apparently, we struck a van head on and let me tell you, it was fucking scary. Everyone seemed to be ok.
Car parts, glass, skidmarks were all over the highway. These are the accidents that you expect to witness - not become a part of. We quickly got out of the car. I inspected the front and it was banged up really badly. I remember the police man saying that we were lucky that nobody was hurt. He said that in most accidents like this some people can get seriously hurt. I'm not sure if he was trying to ease our shock, but after seeing the damage done to the front, I believed every word he said.
Incidentally, the car we hit contained a large latino family. Some of the people in the van may have suffered whiplash as a result of the collision. At the time, I contemplated taking a photo of our car, but out of respect to everyone, and the police that were cleaning up the "scene" I decided not to.
We waited in a Subway restaurant until the rental car company could provide us with a new rental car. If you look at my pictures, the first few pictures of the vegas trip involved waiting in Boron, CA.