While inching my way home this afternoon on a busy local freeway I noticed a man standing in the median between the slow lane and a crowded onramp hold both arms extended with thumbs up. Desperate for a ride, his squinting eyes furtively scanned the faces of each driver as they passed by, hoping his desperate, animated pleas for a ride would convince a good citizen to stop and pick him up.
As I slowly approached this roadside apparition, two cop cars sped by me in the emergency lane with lights flashing and sirens wailing before finally coming to a screeching halt in front of the hitchhiker. They quickly emerged from their vehicles with guns drawn and began barking orders. In my rearview mirror I could see the man on his stomach with both cops pinning him to the ground.
I’m unsure if this guy had just committed a crime and was trying to get away, but that was an unusual and highly dangerous location to be thumbing a ride from.
If nothing else, it was a surreal way to end a busy work day
I would pay good money to know what that pedestrian on the far left side of the bridge was thinking. It’s obvious that he noticed the truck with its raised bed fast approaching. He paused, long enough to root himself to the ground in fear, before the earth beneath him fell away. Frightening…
I find this interesting because Mt. Rubidoux is just a few miles (give or take) from my house. It’s a place I’ve driven past many, many times. I always knew that Easter services were popular, but I wasn’t aware how far back this yearly ritual went. Imagine trying to make your way down this bumpy one-way mountain road in your Model ‘T’ after the sunrise services.
Another interesting thing I discovered while researching this clipping is that Wikipedia has this photo on their Mt. Rubidoux Wiki site. Comparing the cars in the Wiki photo with this newspaper clipping, it became apparent that, if Wikipedia has their dates correct then my newspaper photo is actually from 1913.
Would anybody out there with an affinity for automobiles be able to pinpoint the date from which this photo was actually taken? Call me curious…
While driving home this afternoon I witnessed a car accident on the freeway. I was traveling 70mph in the number two lane. A white BMW passed me going roughly 75 and was now about 30 feet in front of me in the fast (left hand) lane. Ahead of us was an ocean of red brake lights. Seeing this, everyone began to put on their brakes, slowing down to 55. From my left a white Pontiac Grand Prix screamed past easily doing 90mph+, and slammed right into the rear end of the BMW like a computer-guided three ton sidewinder missile. I didn’t see any hint of this Pontiac slowing down, nor hear any squeal from its tires.
It’s amazing what a car crash sounds like up close. It’s difficult to appreciate the subtle nuances of the entire violent act without intimate firsthand experience. The ugly crunch of metal, the spray of glass, the slowing down of time…it’s almost surrealistic, like you’re watching a movie; it seems strangely removed and far too real to be real.
I’m no stranger to shocking misfortunes. I myself have been in a horrible car crash, and nearly lost my life rock climbing in Joshua Tree during a winter snowstorm, but these are distant memories. I’d forgotten how the mind processes traumatic events.
The front of the Pontiac was crushed like a dirty pair of jeans balled up on the bathroom floor, paint flaked off the hood in large sheets exposing the dull metal beneath, and the front tires were splayed out like a tawdry centerfold pose. The front windshield looked like somebody took an angry baseball bat to it. I could see a smooth splash of blood on the opposite side of the glass. From the impact, the BMW was thrust straight forward about 200 feet, but surprisingly it didn’t suffer nearly the amount of damage that the Pontiac has sustained. The back bumper was pushed into the trunk, and something was leaking out from underneath, leaving behind a jagged liquid trail on the grooved pavement.
If I had left work a minute sooner (or later), and had chosen the fast lane instead of the number two lane, that BMW could have been me. It’s crazy how fate/destiny/luck works. With so many possible “what ifs”, one could go loopy thinking about such things.
