Today's Lesson in Physics, or: Your Teacher is an Idiot.

According to a recent poll, I ride my bike to work approximately 79% of school days. Due to an off-campus appointment, today fell into the 21% of days in which I drive. I was on pace to be six-and-a-half minutes early to homeroom. I was feeling quite proud of this would-be feat, which was of course compounded by the Packers 34-0 embarrassment of the Vikings yesterday at Lambeau.

It was a fist-pump kind of day, but today would yield no such fist-pump. As I turned left from the Wedge parking lot into the alley, I was met with my coffee in my face and on my brand new pants. It was strewn about the steering wheel, dashboard, and middle console, too. Miraculously, thanks to some unknowable saving grace, my sweater (also brand new) was spared.

This was no gravity-defying, anti-Newtonian coffee. Quite the opposite, in fact, is true. This coffee was simply doing what objects in motion tend to do when the vehicle they're traveling in hits a reinforced steel pole. You see, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Attempts to get out of my car (1996 Ford Taurus, "Stegataurus") by means of the driver side were futile--the door was crunched such that I couldn't open it more than two inches. I decided I would assess the damage once at school, and so I drove on, noting with a glance at the clock that I would now merely be on time for homeroom.

As it turns out, I was late, due in large part to the godawful Lyndale-Hennepin stoplights. The damage to the car is embarrassing, not merely because I drove directly into a reinforced steel pole, but because I will now have to enter and exit my car from the passenger side door. Worse yet, perhaps, is that I am really--I mean really--upset about the lost half mug of coffee. It was perhaps my best brew in recent memory.