Now, I should have known this rule: don’t drive behind big dirty dump trucks. Doing this is not compatible with keeping your car’s paint nice and ding free. But I wasn’t paying attention and I broke the rule. So I’m rocking out and drumming on the steering wheel to my bay city rollers eight track, doing the head bob, fixated on the big dirty butt of a air craft carrier sized dump truck just ahead of me. I was at a spot where the road narrows and we merge and all slow down. Maybe it was the truck slowing down, or maybe a the driver pushed some James Bond type button designed to fend of pursuers, but suddenly I was caught in a hail storm of tiny black pebbles. As if a storm cloud had opened up just above me. There must have been hundreds. Maybe thousands. Seriously. Bouncing off my hood and windshield. I almost turned on my windshield wiper. All I could do was take the lord’s name in vain at the top of my lungs (sorry Lord) and run down my list of nasty words only sailors are supposed to say. In the end all I can do is apologize to my Corvette. I’m sorry Corvette. When I got to work I looked briefly at the hood and it looks like I escaped okay. Maybe they were all small enough to just bounce off. I just got the car waxed so maybe that saved me. But then again, maybe I didn’t look hard enough and the hood now looks like the surface of the moon. A bright red moon. With tiny craters and abandoned NASA equipment.