Driving jitters

As might be expected after a fairly serious car accident, I'm a little nervous about driving now--more so now than after my accident in January. With that accident at least I knew exactly what happened and I knew that it was my own carelessness/stupidity that caused the accident. It made me slow down and drive more cautiously--particularly in poor weather/road conditions, but that was about it.

With this accident, though, I now feel nervous about being on the road with other drivers (which is most of the time). In the back of my mind I keep wondering if they're fully in control, if they see me, if they're going to stop where they're supposed to, etc. etc. It's pretty tiring, mentally.

But I really want to go to Oirase Gorge/Lake Towada to see the autumn leaves this weekend so I'm going to have to suck it up and get over it. (It needs to be this weekend in particular since next weekend I'll be too busy to go, plus Aaron told me the leaves have already mostly changed colour, so if I wait too much longer it might be too late!) Of course the road will probably be packed, so I'm extra nervous about that.

Right now my plan is to try to go early Sunday morning--like 5:30-6:00am so that hopefully it won't be as crowded--of course, with my "luck" everyone else will probably have the same idea.... At the very least, though, I hope I can avoid some of the buses. *sigh* I'm tempted to ask people if they want to come with (in the hopes that they'll offer to do the driving for me) but I'd feel bad inviting people knowing that was partly my motivation.

So yeah, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I should hopefully have some nice fall foliage photos to post by the end of this weekend!

Oh, and I learned today that I misjudged the old lady. Apparently when she was insisting on getting the car repaired, she was actually saying that she would pay for all the repairs--so it wasn't like she was trying to find the cheapest way out of the situation, which is what I thought at the time. Even though I still think her attitude/behaviour was pretty abrupt, at least now I feel like she recognized that she was in the wrong and sincerely wanted to make amends. It doesn't change the situation at all--I'm pretty sure her insurance company will convince her to take only 80-90% of the blame/cost, rather than 100%--but knowing that the offer was made does make me feel better about things.