comic update. Yay.

Obscure Tales three is updated. New two page spread. I've also given it a title. I had a one since the beginning, but something that Don Snabulous said in a comment about the comment made me think it might work. Let me know if it's cheesy; it's on the cover.

In meatspace action, a weird thing happened today. I was helping my former Aikido sensei dig post holes (with a giant mechanical auger that worked better once we figured out which way was reverse and which was forward). I stopped training actively about two years ago and it feels strange to be just a friend and call him by his name after years of being his student. Anyway, after four hours of work he was driving me home, but we decided to stop at the hardware store before it closed. On the way to the store, we passed my road (if he dropped me off at the end of the road as I'd asked, the store would have closed). We did our business at the store and as we waited to pull out a local rescue ambulance and a volunteer EMT sped by going towards my town.

When we got near my road, it was blocked off by a fire truck (literally across the road blocking rubberneckers) and a firefighter waving us to take the immediate left near the graveyard. Sensei dropped me off at the post office; there's a shortcut trail behind the PO that Sweet Enemy and I take to get to our house. I decided to go through the woods to the main road to check on the accident, not with morbid intentions (seen one dead guy on a SAR case in1992, that's enough for me, thanks), but just because I didn't know it was an MVA. In the woods, I met a local teen who told me a car hit a telephone pole right at the end of our street.

Still curious, I went on. I was about 20 meters from the road, when I came around the graveyard's equipment shed, when I spied some EMTs with a stretcher in the graveyard! I was a bit creeped out. To get where the EMTs were, someone would have to have been thrown twenty or more feet. Not wanting to seem like a morbid a**hole rubbernecking at an obvious fatality, I went home and told SE (who, having heard the actual crash, was relieved it wasn't sensei and I).

About a half-hour later, we heard the ambulance leave, then a half-hour later, we went to leave for a cookout and found the road still blocked by caution tape. We could see a utility truck, a telephone pole right at the end of our street on the soutbound side nearly snapped off hanging by its own wires, and the accident vehicle. It was in the northbound lane facing the phone pole with its hazards on and the passenger door open. It was only about ten feet from the pole.

I tried to Sherlock Holmes it out, but since I'm dumb, all I got was more questions. Obviously, it hit the pole and spun. But, why only 90 degrees and why only ten feet away? Was it traveling not-so-fast, or did it hit so hard that most of its momentum was spent? Who put the hazards on? There could be two reasons for the passenger door being open: either a passenger had to be removed or rescue opened the door so they could more easily stabilize the driver. But, why were they in the graveyard? Was the driver ambulatory and concussed and just wandered away (the graveyard is northbound and too far away for the ejection argument).

Anyway, Sensei's neighbor works for the local paper and told him that it was a single occupant with no fatalities. I hope no crippling either.

What was also interesting is they knocked out the power to allow the crew to change the pole, but not just near the accident. Sensei lives about eight miles southeast in the same town and they had no power. They must have secured the entire line for the town of Underhill. What is also interesting is that this is the second time in a year that a pole at the bottom of our street was hit. Last time, the impact knocked out the power.

Ok. Enough words.

Listening to while posting. "One Word" by Tim 'Love' Lee