We spent most of our Valentine’s Day (and our general day off) traveling in Querétaro attempting to get both boys and Beth to dental appointments. Beth has needed to see a dentist for months but we were unable to locate one in our area here last summer that didn’t have a negative recommendation from the experience of either ourselves or someone else so that she never had a chance to see one. In October when I was having over $800 worth of dental repair done, we really couldn’t afford to have even more done so Beth had to wait on getting some work done that she really needed done.
Finally, today was the day. We just received a new recommendation on a dentist so we’re giving him a shot. He’s young. He’s got some fancy-looking equipment. He’s not cheap for Mexico. However, we’ll give him a try. We have an annual medical/dental membership card that saves us money with certain doctors and dentists in Querétaro, and this dentist is new to the discount list. Beth has two teeth that need immediate attention (one with a continuing cavity). He’ll work on those next Monday. Then, on future Mondays he’ll be working on 10 more teeth that have very old (20-30 years old) fillings that are crumbling. He was impressed that these fillings had made it this long.
Including today’s visit and all the subsequent work he has planned out, it should cost about $8,000 pesos. That’s under $700. For that much work being done, we really can’t complain. Whether he does the work well or not is the big question. We sure hope so! We’ve seen such promising starts end poorly before, so we’ll just have to see how it goes. If it goes well, I’ll probably eventually go in for a bit of work myself.
Finally, you may be wondering what the blog post title has to do with visiting the dentist. It isn’t anything profound. Simply, we were within sight of the dentist’s office today on a 6 lane highway and we were needing to go further up the road a bit and follow a “retorno” (basically a U-Turn) to get over to the other side of the highway where the office is located. Up ahead we could see in front of us a white local bus (“ruta”) and out of nowhere, just to the left of that bus a cloud of dust all of a sudden whipped up in the rocky median. Within moments we realized that somehow a car was in that cloud of dust and was now resting on its side. We see a lot of accidents long after they’ve happened, but not very often do we see one happen right before our very eyes.
Beth took a photo as we passed by after having made the U-Turn. About 5 minutes later after dropping Beth off at the dentist, Cameron took a photo of the car after it had been pushed back onto its wheels. Amazingly, just before taking the first picture, we had seen the driver pull himself up out of the seat and jump up on his car and hop off of it. He must have had his seat belt on to avoid serious injury. It was quite a surreal-looking scene. Glad it seemed to end up better than what our first glimpse of the dust in the wind made it appear.
If you notice in the bottom photo, the front right bumper of the white bus, appears to have a dark scrape which matches a dark scrape on the driver’s side quarter panel of the small Nissan Tsuru. It appeared from the tire marks on the pavement that the car apparently changed lanes too close to the front of the bus which spun it a bit, and then by hitting the curb, it popped over onto its side there in the median. (My first job out of college was as an insurance adjuster. I covered auto accidents among a lot of other types of claims. Always find this stuff interesting.) Knowing how aggressive the buses in Querétaro often drive, it could be the bus that was changing lanes but it didn’t seem like the bus was moving laterally when the accident unfolded in front of us. Either way, we praise God for a safe drive to and from Querétaro every time we go.
Knowing Your ABCDs 
Do you suppose he called Progressive??
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