Contact Us Home

O ônibus (The bus) November 29, 2003   The days leading up to our travels were full, lots of things to do and tasks to complete before we could head out. I thought maybe I should carry my Palm Pilot with me, so that I could keep up to date on my to do list that busy week. Monday came and went and I was able to mark off nearly 15 of my 20 items on my list. I was happy, I still had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to complete the final 5 items. Tuesday morning, Sandi and I headed downtown to take care of some business with our house. I was already getting prepared to mark another item off on the Palm. I dropped Sandi off outside the office, and had drive around the block due to the traffic officer that started to take notice of my license plate number. I received the friendly thumbs-up gesture from the officer as I pulled away. Traffic was busy and tight; I took my time, making my way around the block to pick up Sandi. I was slowing approaching the building, when a large city bus kept creeping into my lane. I did the one thing that is universal around the world- HONK! I honked and even honked more and people on the sidewalks started yelling at the driver, but he kept moving from the right lane to the left lane, and ever so close to our fairly new mission vehicle and me. I was as far to the left as I could get without taking off mirrors on the cars parked on the left side of the one-way street. But that did not stop the driver. He kept coming over. He finally stopped coming over after he hit me. People were yelling at him from everywhere. I was not able to get out of the car, pinched by the bus on the right, and too close the parked cars on my right to even think about opening a door. The driver looked out his side window, saw what the situation was, and pulled the bus forward and away from me. He approached my car and I rolled down the window, many witnesses gathered at this point, and he proceeded to yell at me as if this was my fault. He then returned to his bus and drove off. We were able to get a phone number of the bus before he got to far. A witness advised us, that without the license plate number or bus number, it would be hard to have them pay for our damage. The ‘chase’ ensued. The only damage our car received from this bus was to the side-mirror. Actually, the mirror was not even broken, only a few key areas of the housing that holds the mirror assembly to the car are what broke. Sandi and I were able to track the bus down and get a number a partial license plate number. The following day, we were able to file a report with the right police post. I was able to get an estimate from the dealer where we bought the car. Tom was able to present all of this to the garage manager after we left for the States. Even though I thought I had plenty of time to get all my things done, one little incident that only took a matter of seconds ended up creating many new items at the top of my list and pushed everything else on my list to a lower priority. This one event ended up eating up nearly all of my time. I was able to get all my to do list items completed before I left. But I had to put in ‘overtime’ to get it done. I thought I would be done and have plenty of time to pack and make a relaxing a trip to the airport. One of these days, I will write about what ‘overtime’ means as it relates to missionary life. Remember, it is okay honk.