Beginners guide to spending $250 at the drive thru

This past week while on vacation I became involved in my first at fault accident. It all started simple enough, trying to find a nice country restaurant for lunch. My friend and I turned off of Interstate 39 and onto US 24 which runs straight east/west through Illinois and Indiana. I figured we would certainly find many such restaurants along the way.

An hour and a half later we still had not and my "internal pressure" situation became increasingly desperate, going from "need to go soon", to "really need to go soon", to "I've gotta go real soon", to "Can't hold it much longer" culminating in "I'm in pain, I'll stop anywhere now". About which time we rolled into Watseka, IL and came across the local McDonald's. This McDonald's located at a 3 way intersection, so the left turn lane into the parking lot only one car long. I pulled into this lane and promptly noted someone backing out of the driveway and proceeding to the next drive. Quickly scanning the parking lot I saw they had it all blocked off for resealing, only the drive thru lane open, cars backed up all the way to the street. So I proceeded to pull into the drive, look for oncoming traffic, put the van in reverse and Crunch!! Turned out a young high school girl and her friend had pulled right up behind me, so instead of backing onto US 24, I backed into them. Between my urinary distress, noting no one behind me when I made my left turn and focusing on the traffic barreling down US 24 it never occurred to me to check directly behind me for a car on my bumper. Well someone had made their left turn immediately after I made mine and now they had precisely one less set of headlights on their vehicle, Grrr!!

The bright side - No one hurt, no tickets issued, Van OK, girl's car suffered damage only to driver's side headlights and part of the grill, girls real nice and had proper insurance, officer very courteous and professional, delay to trip minimal as friends in Indiana expecting us, I owned up to what happened and didn't try to blame the whole thing on the girls or the McDonald's, took my friends advice and bought the girls lunch at the McDonald's, life lesson learned

The down side - I will loose my "Premier" status on my insurance, I'm still jumpy while driving 3 days later, wonder if I should have asked some questions about the role the girls played in the accident by pulling up so close to me when my bumper had barely cleared the curb due to the backed up drive thru.

In case you're wondering, we did find a nice country restaurant in the very next town, Kentland, IN and had a wonderful lunch for $11 between the two of us.