Road Safety

Wow, last week was a real reminder about the dangers of getting behind the wheel here in Miami. I saw two accidents, and, I am ashamed to say, was also involved in one as well. Don't worry, mine was nothing serious, but it was my first accident down here, and a bit upsetting.

My uncle told me that the average Miamian is in an accident every 5 years.

I was driving on the Snapper Creek Expressway on Monday of last week, and had just entered a curve that merges onto another highway. Suddenly, the white car in the far right lane next to me crashed full speed into the concrete side of the ramp. Sparks were flying, the car slid for a number of yards along the concrete, spun around once, and came to a stop right at end of the next entrance ramp. I was frantically feeling around for my cell phone to call 911, but then looked over and saw the woman driving the SUV next to me was already on the phone. Luckily, the man driving the white car was conscious and moving around, and didn't appear to be seriously injured. I'm not sure exactly what he was doing to not notice the curve coming up, but I expect it involved a cell phone or radio. It's a good reminder to pay heed to those warnings about chatting/texting on your phone while driving.

Two days later, I was coming off the Turnpike at rush hour right by FIU to pick David up from work so we could get him some camping gear for a trip he took this week. I needed to get over into the left lane to make a turn, and so turned around to check my blindspot. When I looked back to the front, the traffic had unexpectedly stopped, and I ran right into the woman in front of me. Lucky for both of us, I wasn't going more than 15-20 mph and there is just some slight fender damage, but I guess I can now be counted in the masses of crazy Miami drivers out there (but at least I was checking my blind spot!). What made everything worse was that we had to wait 2 hours for the highway patrol to come out, and I was feeling pretty exhausted by the time it was all over. Not to mention a series of sexist remarks from the patrolman (but more on that next time).

So believe it or not, that wasn't it for car accidents that week. Friday I was driving to the greenhouse at TREC with my coworker in our little golfcart, and we saw a patrol car and tow truck out by the litchi field. So naturally we went over to investigate. It turned out that the husband of one of our students who lives on the premises got attacked by a bee while he was driving (well, he actually claims it was about FIVE bees), and hit the gas instead of the break. He plowed right through a poor litchi tree, and had to get the car towed out. It was a mess! And even worse, the car was a rental (I hope he has good insurance).

I know they always say bad things happen in threes, but I sure hope I am done with car accidents for a while.

The finish line is in sight

I spent most of this week checking margin widths, indents, capitalization, and page numbers.

After a couple of reams of paper...sorry trees, I have successfully submitted my dissertation in the correct format. It's 243 pages of my blood, sweat, and yes, even tears, and I am so excited to be almost finished. All I have to do now is give my exit seminar and pass my defense...both scheduled for October 27th.

In the meantime, I have started a new job at the TREC Plant Diagnostic Clinic. (And yes, one of my new tasks is to write bi-weekly posts for the clinic blog, so if you are curious about plant diseases we see in here in south Florida, check out the link). The job is fantastic so far, I have several projects started, and every day is new and different. I still get to do research, but now I also get to see all sorts of diseased plant samples coming in (it IS fun, really!), and so I am seeing lots of fungi that I'm not that familiar with. I get to exercise all of my knowledge from all the training I have had to diagnose the samples.

In addition, I am doing some writing for extension publications, and I will eventually participate in some training events as well. So I should get some good teaching experience, and it's really fun to interact with the public, as opposed to exclusively working within academia.

I also get to go to Puerto Rico in November to train some collaborators in molecular diagnostics!