Taxi!

I hardly ever take taxi's. Just don't need to all that often (bus tickets are more my speed). So today I had a French test downtown for my job classification and I got some Taxi chits (i.e. free taxi vouchers) and went down to butcher the French language that afternoon. I think I scared the testing lady with my 'Punisher' T-shirt, but it's what I felt like that day. When I was done I left and tried to hail a taxi without any success (that just doesn't work in Ottawa, they are always going somewhere to pick someone else up). I found a taxi stand but that guy was too busy having a smoke and he pointed me to another cab stand down the road (lucky for him, he just didn't know it yet). That taxi took my fare and we sped off to where I work. When we were two blocks from my building someone 5 cars ahead of us decided to stop suddenly and turn left. 4 sets of brake lights flashed to life followed by many screeching tires. None of the cars ahead of us hit anything, but the huge Ford crew-cab towing the quad horse trailer full of landscaping equiptment tailgating us did not fare so lucky. WHAMMO! Hello seatbelt.
The plastic rear bumper of my cab was obliterated. Luckily the driver of the huge truck was also the president of the landscaping company and told the cabbie he'd take care of everything. They exchanged cards and numbers and stuff as I screwed my head back on. I was ok. I got back to the office and everyone is telling me to fill out an accident report, that this kind of thing hurts like hell 'afterwards'.
And by late afternoon, it did start to hurt, but probably because everyone was telling me it was going to. After work I picked up my kids and then offered to help someone carry a huge safe up a flight of stairs. It was one of those big price Club gun-safe jobbies, heavier than Rita McNeil. We took the door off and made two trips and by the second I couldn't hear anymore (weird that) but my neck suddenly felt great!

So if you ever get whiplash, carry a safe up a flight of stairs! You'll be cured!