First, don’t worry: it wasn’t me.

The day began as usual: checking email, calling the United States, and taking care of business. I baked some muffins and scones. To get out of the house, I decided to visit one of the markets on Oxford Street in the city. I love markets. At about 2:00, I left the house and headed down Parramatta Road.

An hour later, I had parked on a side street and was walking towards the market. It had more variety than the markets I knew in Taiwan, which often sold many of the same things, and I enjoyed looking around. One food vendor wanted to sell a few remaining kebab sandwiches and lowered the price from $8.50 to $5, so I picked up two.

After wandering through the market, I continued down Oxford Street and visited a few shops. Eventually, I made it back to the car and started home.

I had intended to take Parramatta Road all the way home, but I was caught in the far-right lane, three lanes from where I needed to be, and could not continue straight. My only option was to take the M4, which was fine. The car in front of me was moving sharply between lanes. The driver was clearly in a hurry.

When the light turned green, I headed onto the on-ramp. Halfway down the ramp, the older red Lancer accelerated hard, producing a cloud of black smoke as it moved through the traffic ahead. I rounded the corner just as the driver lost control, hit the right median, and crossed the ramp to the left side of the road.

“That poor guy just had an accident,” I said, still a few seconds behind him. The driver to my right and I both pulled over, and I got out to see whether he was all right. The driver of the Lancer quickly left his car, visibly shaken, and sat on the left side of the road. The other person called a tow truck and the police while I offered to help. The situation appeared to be under control, so I said goodbye and returned to the freeway. A few kilometres later, I reached the tollbooth and told the attendant about the accident.

The lesson of the day: saving three minutes is not worth the risk of speeding.

After I came home, I went for a pint of Guinness at the Irish pub near my apartment. This was partly consolation for the Sydney Swans losing to Collingwood in the AFL. Better luck next time, Swans.

That brings me to tonight, as I work on refining my Amazon S3 backup plan. I’ll write about the final result in my tech blog. Today was a good day.