I was about to leave my house to drive to Tacoma to a bar (crazy thing for a parent to actually a. leave the house at night and b. go to a bar) on Wednesday, and while I was putting the baby down for the night, I heard this loud humming I couldn't identify. At first, I thought our newish furnace was acting up again, but then realized the sound was coming from outside.

I walked out front to the car, looked up, and saw three freaking news helicopters hovering over the bus accident in the Arboretum. A genius bus driver, following his GPS and ignoring four signs (including flashing lights) about overheight vehicles shaved nearly two feet off his bus, and injured dozens of Garfield High School students on board.

This bridge is about six blocks from our house, a lovely and historically recognized bridge across Lake Washington Boulevard to the Washington Park Arboretum.

Goddamn copter vultures. I can understand sending photographers out; it's definitely news. But, please, breaking news? Bus hits bridge. That story ain't going to have more developments. Oop, wait, they got the bus out from under the bridge! Hurray! I wanted to call 911 and report the copters, but I couldn't figure out how to claim they were violating any laws. Just the laws of sanity and reason.

The students on the bus were members of the high school's softball teams, and one of the teams had just had a shutout loss. Adding insult to injury would be a severe understatement of the event. It sounds from reports that there were no serious injuries, but several kids were taken to the hospital.

The bridge was largely unhurt.

The bar I went to was Doyle's, which was superb.

We had a helicopter circling our neighborhood for an hour at around 11pm on Saturday looking for a badguy (using infrared, instead of spotlights). The wife and I were wide awake in sheer terror that the rotors would wake the baby, as its circle kept it passing right above our house. Luckily, all was fine and bad guy was eventually caught.

Speaking from long experience (My kids are 18 & 14) I would heartily suggest that new parents hit the bar on occasion. ;)

--chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org