Was that a hole, man?

The following event occurred on the same trip as the visit to the zoo, but I thought it deserved its own post.  We had to swing by Andrey's grandma's place on the way home and after a lovely hello, I started to take off.  I surveyed my options on this typical rubble-strewn street and spied a little dog running straight at us down the middle of the road.  As I began to ease LEFT to miss it, Andrey began with ever-increasing intensity to urge me to go RIGHT.  By the time I realized that he was referring to an issue other than the dog, it was too late to miss the uncovered manhole (hence title of the post) directly in front of us that I had been unable to see over the hood of the car.  In a final attempt to divert me away from the hole, Andrey gestured emphatically, punching a spidering crack in the windshield.  No damage was done to the car (other than the passenger side glass) so we decided to get some good pictures.

The funny part about these pictures is that although they are posted in what seems to be a logical chonological order, this is actually opposite of how we took them.  I went from all smiles near the wheel to staged disbelief to faux agony at the steering wheel.

Andrey told me that the reason I hit it is because an American driver would never anticipate that many manhole covers would go missing; stolen to be resold as scrap.