In early April on my way back from UC I hopped on an entrance ramp in my ‘00 Mustang to go on the arterial. I had crappy Goodyear Eagle GAs (read: worst tire ever) that were pretty well worn. There was about an inch of snow on the ramp, and I noticed that there was a guy behind me.

During the merge, I managed to kick the rear end loose because I was backwards from checking the blind spot, and then spun around 180 degrees, finally coming to a stalled stop but facing 2 lanes of oncoming 50 mph traffic, 3 cars deep each.

Last thought before impact: So this is how it ends.

Luckily the guy behind me on the ramp came to a stop, and to my amazement both the rows of traffic moved over and snuck by me. I started the car, turned it around and drove home, very carefully. My first and only mistake last winter, and it could have been fatal.

So I was heading home to Chicago at around 11PM on a Sunday night. Traffic on I-90 was fairly light and I was going about 75 mph in my old 2001 Celica GT and this white Honda Prelude with two young guys in it had been coming up alongside me, dropping back, zipping ahead and then falling back alongside me again for miles. I figured that they wanted to race but I knew they would kick my ass since my GT was a) an automatic and b) had only 140 hp. They were in a manual 200 hp Prelude.
Anyway, so this goes on for a bit with the Prelude floating around me until, finally, they take off and I lose sight of them. Around the west-bound Irving Park road exit there’s a bit of a curve in the expressway that hides upcoming traffic for a second. Well, Immediately after hitting this curve I notice that the car in front me slams on it’s brakes which causes me to do the same. The highly effective brakes on the Celica (one of it’s best points) saved me there since I stopped mere inches from the other cars bumper. After the initial shock of the emergency braking left I wondered why the hell we were stopped in the first place. Well, it turns out that the same white Prelude from before comes slowly rolling towards us and finally ends up facing the wrong direction on the shoulder of the road. The entire side of the car was bashed in and the two young dudes got out and were just shaking. Apparently they had zipped ahead, tried to pass someone on the right-hand shoulder, screwed up, over-compensated to the left and ended up spinning across three lanes of expressway, slamming into the opposite wall and rolling to a stop on the left-hand shoulder.
Pretty crazy.

The moral of that story is don’t drive like a jackass kids. But at the end of the day nobody got hurt as far as I could tell so, whatever.

Two summers ago, MLB All-Star Weekend was at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and I was living in Chicago at the time. I’m driving up Lake Shore Drive, and the light is turning red in front of me, so I stop, obviously.

At the stop light I casually looked to my left and saw a black BMW X5 4.4i, so of course I look in to see who’s driving (the windows are rolled down) and it’s Derek Jeter in the passenger seat with Jason Giambi driving. They’re chatting away, and then Jeter looks over at me and I kinda nod, and then he starts laughing, nods, and then keeps on talking to Jason. The light turns green, and they take a quick left.

“Honey, look! It’s Jeter and Giambi in the car next to us!” I say to my girlfriend. She doesn’t even bother to look, turns to me, and says “stop lying and find a damn parking spot.”