For those of you who recall my misadventures through Philadelphia's airport, or the black hole, as I call it, add this to the file of weird stuff that happens on the road:

I finished working on stories about Tampa Bay's 7-4 loss to the Capitals Thursday night at the Verizon Center after midnight. Tarik El-Bashir, who writes about the Caps for the Washington Post, also was finishing up, so I asked him for a ride back to my hotel. Easy enough, right?

As we rolled up to the arena's parking garage exit, we noticed the large metal door that spans the opening was open about four feet high. As we got closer, we noticed the bottom of the left side of the door was crumpled outward as if something had tried to bash its way past. As the door is supposed to automatically open as a car approaches, the fact that it was stuck in that spot did not bode well. Tarik hit the call button to the security office. A person there tried to automatically raise the door. We could tell by the beeping, but had no luck. When the security person said she had no idea why the door wasn't opening, Tarik described what the door looked like. The security person said she had no knowledge of that and would send an engineer.

The engineer came and looked as did Tarik, whose attention was drawn across the street to where a fire engine with siren blaring, an ambulance and several cop cars pulled up. "You've got to see this," Tarik called to me. Seems a car, a nice looking BMW, had crashed head first into a business across the street. The front end was crumpled, the windshield smashed and water was beginning to flood the street from a wrecked fire hydrant or water pipe.

As we found out sketchily from the police, a guy driving the car had tried to beat the closing arena door. He didn't, and the top of the car hit the bottom of the door that scraped its way along the car. Somehow the car made it past the door but also went out of control and crashed into the building across the street. Amazingly, the police had the guy, who seemed okay. But as one cop said, he was on his way to the lockup.

Tarik's car was a prisoner, too, but of the crumpled door. I could have gotten a cab at that point or tried to make the last run of the subway (it was very cold out), but I didn't want to leave my colleague, either. And I was interested to see how this would play out.

At one point, Tarik called his wife and tried to explain why he was not home and might be a while. He relayed that his wife playfully accused him of making up this fantastic story because he wanted to stay out and have a few beers.

"Uh, huh," he said was her response after he told her what was happening. Not surprising when you consider people on the street, walking by and hearing what was happening, couldn't believe it, either.

Here is where we give credit to the arena guys, who worked so hard to fix the door and kept assuring us they would do so as quickly as possible. First, they got a huge pair of pruning shears -- you know, the two-handed jobs made for cutting big branches -- and began using it as a sledgehammer, trying to straighten the crumpled part of the door. The clanging was so loud, especially if you were inside the garage, it hurt your ears. Little poofs of dust fell from the ceiling with each blow, which wasn't real comforting, either. After a while, the guy swinging the shears could only take three swings at a time before stopping to gather his strength. Then came the actual sledgehammer and more clanging. Finally, someone yelled, "One more snag," and after more clanging, the door seemed straightened enough to be raised. But there was still trouble as the door had at least partially disengaged from the chain that is used to manually raise the it.

What to do? Get the fork lift, which slowly raised the door until it finally was high enough that Tarik's car, and two others behind him, could finally get out. The whole process took about 45 minutes and I got to the hotel a little after 1 a.m.

Before we left, we cleared some debris from in front of Tarik's car such as part of a broken windshield, a piece of broken windshield wiper and various pieces of plastic. As we drove past the wreckage across the street, it was clear the car was totaled. And as one arena worker told us, had the driver just waited for the closing door to get to the ground, it would have gone right back up. It is not a lesson learned easily, apparently, as the arena worker told us the door is regularly abused by cars trying to make it out of the garage before it closes.

"You're not going to beat the door," he said.