I’d like to know what his excuse was…
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…
Clipping from a newspaper, circa 1920:
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.
I’ve railed against bad drivers in the past, and even when I’m actively berating the behavior of my fellow cagers I find the whole activity of pointing out bad driving habits clichéd and redundant. But…two things happened to me on the road today that I’m at a loss to understand.
Incident #1: Driving into work this morning I’m coasting down the road going 45 when a car pulls out in front of me from a side street and guns it, his straining engine spitting grey smoke from its trembling tailpipe. Okay, whatever. No big deal. I tap the brakes a bit to avoid getting too close, and proceed to follow him for several miles, never getting within two seconds of him. He eventually pulls over into a right turning lane, then sticks his arm out of his open window and flips me off. I’m still trying to understand why he did this. Did I offend him in another life or something?
Incident #2: I’m backing out of my parking stall at work, and am two-thirds out when a car squeezes past me from behind, narrowly missing hitting my car by inches, then honks his horn at me. WTF? I’m inching my way out in my S2000, trying to see around the Ford F150 that’s blocking my view, and this brain stem decides to blow past me? How could he have not seen that I was slowly inching out from a blind spot? I wasn’t moving like a bunny, and couldn’t have possibly have surprised him with my creeping speed.
Now, I know that this is a blanket statement, but I still have to ask, “What the frak is wrong with drivers nowadays?“ Why the lack of basic courtesy? The give and take and the Share The Road mentality? Are people so mentally removed and insulated from others while driving in their cars that they fail to understand the simple fact that there are other human beings on the road with them? Where’s the common sense? Where’s the humanity?
Lets take these situations and place them into different circumstances; would you flip someone off at the “10 Items Or Less” checkout line at the grocery store if they had 11 items? Would you scream at a blind man for crossing your path, even though you saw him slowly inch his way down the sidewalk from 100 feet away?
I’m at a loss to describe this sort of behavior, and wonder if these people replay these fleeting moments in time in their heads and ask themselves, “Why did I do that?”
Born in Kiev in 1902, immigrated to the United States in the 30′s, Nudie Cohn was intent on becoming a boxer, but through fate and circumstance he instead fell into tailoring. In the 40′s, Nudie and his wife Bobbie began making clothes out of their garage. So popular were their designs that soon movie stars and rock gods began to clamor for Nudie’s services.
Credited with being the first man to sew rhinestones on to clothes, his relentless self-promoting brought him to the attention of such acts as Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Gram Parsons, ZZ Top, Wilco, and Roy Rogers. Ever the eccentric, Nudie would places stickers of his face on to dollar bills and give them away to those in need, stating, “when you get sick of looking at me, just rip it off and spend it!”
Nudie was also into cars, and with the help of GM he began to customize them in western motifs. Karin and I were fortunate enough to see a “Nudie Mobile” recently, and let me tell ya, this thing was intense; covered in silver dollars, decked out with rifles, handguns, and shotguns, and sporting a set of horns that would make any self-respecting steer blush, this is one car that’s impossible to ignore.
