Archive for

March, 2007

Car Crash Crappola

March 22nd, 2007 by Rena

I had to run out yesterday so I didn’t get to finish up about my car crash. My pal Susanna asked me some questions so I will answer them here.


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IF: Total and a Car Accident

March 21st, 2007 by Rena

Total Woman
This piece for Illustration Friday is titled, “Total Woman” because this sexy mamacita is all woman! Ok, maybe she’s a bit less woman and more of a scanned pencil crayon drawing that was altered and coloured in Photoshop.

I have a live to tell story now… muy asustado… very scary. Pedro and I picked up my parents from the airport in San Jose last Tuesday in a rental car. I was driving. This was my parents first visit to Costa Rica and their first time meeting my husband and his family…oooh scary!

The first part of the drive is up and around and down and around some very large mountains. I don’t really like driving them (being more acquainted with driving the flat landscape of my hometown, Toronto, Canada) but I just concentrate on the road ahead and try not to look to the steep drops on the side and all is fine for me. It’s always much nicer being in the inner lane next to the mountain.

An hour into our drive home I was driving down the mountain when I noticed that a push on the breaks seemed to speed up the car before slowing it and I mentioned casually that the breaks seemed a bit off. I was driving automatic car and my dad told me to put it into 2nd gear, which I did. We just came down around a curve and there was a car up ahead of me going around the next curve. The car was moving quite slow but pressing on the breaks was not stopping the car all of a sudden. I floored the breaks once before again casually commenting out loud, “I think the breaks are not working”.

The rest happened very fast. I looked to the left lane where the street was clear but there was a curving mountain and then to the right, where there was a ditch. I chose the ditch, I thought, I had better stop this car somehow, and I thought as the car was movings slowly the ditch would stop us. So I turned into the ditch and Pedro screamed out, “what are you doing? Don’t do this” and the car bumped down the ditch, flew out and crashed into a metal fence where we came to stop…phew! I had a seatbelt welt and a backache and migraine developed soon after. My dad hurt his back and my step-mom and Pedro, sitting in the back, had a few bruises. But thankfully we were alive and unharmed. Had I continued down the road we would have gone off a cliff. I don’t think I’ll drive those roads again, but rather trust the local bus.

Thankfully the rest of the visit with the parents was relaxing and uneventful.

IF: Hide

March 5th, 2007 by Rena

hide 'n seek
When I was a kid I loved a good ole game of hide ‘n seek with the neighbourhood kids. It was always fun hiding out with a friend and giggling and shushing one another with nervous delight. Ahh the good old days…