A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from spending the night with mom, motoring along, thinking of nothing in particular, when out of the blue I saw a cylindrical object spinning toward me.  I had no idea what I was looking at until the very last moment when I realized it was a tire.

Ka-wham! The tire collided with my car with a huge force, and I pulled over to the side of the highway.  A woman ahead of me had been hit as well, and a woman who gave me her name as a witness was parked behind me.

I tried to get out but the driver’s side door wouldn’t open, so I had to clamber out the passenger door.  I walked to the front of my dear Volkswagen Jetta and my heart sunk as I saw a lot of the bumper, fender and hood were actually gone.  I was peering at my left front tire.

The nice woman who acted as a witness pointed at the pickup truck parked beside the highway a distance away, facing in the opposite direction, and missing his rear left tire.  As it turned out his tire came loose as he was driving, and collided with two vehicles, mine getting the worse of it.

I got a ride to a fast food joint in Westbank from a nice volunteer fireman, and then my pal Elsa picked me up and drove me home.  Now I wait for my car to be repaired, as that’s allegedly the plan as it wasn’t written off.

Two days later a 24-year-old man was killed in Ontario when a tire came off a car and collided with his vehicle, so I know I was lucky.  The fireman said had the tire bounced and gone through my windshield I would be dead.

So I guess that’s a good news, bad news kind of story isn’t it?  Kind of like my new plan to get a well, given the City of Kelowna appears unable to manage their way out of a paper bag.

I attended the council meeting wherein I learned the water utilities manager was shocked at the amount of water used by this agricultural area of Kelowna, and also that he was “surprised” by the hot weather in July.

The reason for my attendance was to try to understand how the City thoroughly botched the takeover of our former water district.  Once I left there, I realized my only recourse was to get my own well, and that’s currently in progress.

I have to thank the City though, as if they hadn’t imposed once-weekly watering restrictions in mid-July after a very wet and cold spring, I wouldn’t have known the City is run by a bunch of bozos and might have signed up for their system which comes complete with a water meter.

Hence the good news, bad news scenario here.  The bad news?  You cannot water.  The good news?  You can get a well and water yourself into a stupor.  Not that I would gentle reader, as I’m a careful conservationist with our resources.  I just can’t work with stupid people.