Looping the Hen

The Great Hendersonville Crime Spree

Hendersonville is a town very much like Madison, CT or Old Saybrook near where I grew up (I went to HIgh School in Old Saybrook). Slightly upscale, residents very sure of their place in society, good schools; generally a strong middle/upper middle population.

I live in a town, coincidentally, called Madison, TN. It is more like Branford/East Haven. Some good areas, some rough areas, lots of businesses, shopping, and commerce. Generally also (so I've heard) a higher level of crime. In fact, several of my friends regularly refer to my area of town in less than flattering terms. (To be honest, though, Akbar and WCB have every right to, as he was carjacked there)

Thus, one could say I was mildly perturbed when I walked out of AKBar's house in Hendersonville Friday night after Battlestar Galactica to find my car gone from where I parked it. At first I thought it was a joke and someone had grabbed my keys and moved it. I had parked it on the median of their cul-de-sac, on a fairly good decline. In a last ditch attempt to locate my vehicle, I started pushing the unlock button on my alarm. (it has a range of several hundred yards) Much to my surprise, my vehicle was at the bottom of the hill, in front of someone's garage, surrounded by a crowd of people, including a police officer.

Ugg.

As I approached, the officer told me to turn around and he started with the questions. Your car? Yep. Drinking? A couple. You realize your car ran into this person's house? Errr, nope. I tried to remain friendly and keep my humor, which seemed to work, as he lightened up. All this time, all I can see is the back of my car, and horrid images of a crumpled plastic front end ran through my head. I finally got to take a look: *deep sigh of relief*. The damage was minor; my front end was nicked and scraped, a few hood scratches, damage to the rear quarter panel of the other car in the driveway, and several broken bricks on the garage. He shines the light in the car, and the parking brake is definitely engaged. We try to push it. Nada, not moving.

Best as my friends and I could come up with is someone tried to jack my car by popstarting the clutch, ended up failing, the wheel lock kicked in, car rolls at almost a 45 degree angle (that's the hardest part for me to visualize, because the driveway it was in was at a heckuva angle to where I started), bumps the garage, taps the rear quarter panel of the other car with a tire, and rolls back to a rest. Evildoer then has to climb over my seat to get out of the vehicle, because my car was literally no more than 6 inches away from the Camaro next to me. (The mirrors were within 2)

According to the timing that we put together, this happened within 15-20 minutes of me going into the house, and the cop said he had been there at least an hour and had just called the tow truck and was about to put out a hit-and-run notice for me. Double ugg. I am very lucky I was trying to get to bed for my race in the morning, because otherwise I would never have left the house to find out what had happened. I'm not really sure why no one knocked on any doors looking for the owner of the car, but hey, that's just me.

To be honest, the whole thing could have been much, much worse. It was a pretty fancy piece of driving (see below) that kept both vehicles and the house more or less intact. Still, I'll be happy to remind my friends to lock their cars and hide their cats lest they fall prey to the Great Hendersonville Crime Spree.