(re-run)
My two-hour drive from the beach back to suburbia can become longer if there’s an accident along 101, a two-lane (on each side) highway. Once I got past Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world, where the highway grows to four lanes each way through San Jose, I felt confident that I was going to be home by 12:15.
I was buzzing along with light traffic, listening to a CD I burned for myself a decade ago, one filled with old dance songs and favorite artists. I had labeled it Rocket Man.
I was in the second lane, next to the carpool lane. Suddenly the car in front of me braked hard. I braked just as hard as we came to a complete stop.
“I hope the person behind me . . . “
I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a large SUV coming right for my rear bumper. Then a squeal of the tires and the young woman in her family SUV had skidded completely sideways in the lane. I waited for the crunch of metal, but it didn’t come. The cars in front of me changed lanes to reveal a large dome-like thing, wrapped in bubble wrap and clear plastic, sitting in the center of my lane. The SUV woman took a moment to compose herself. Then she changed lanes and accelerated as a black pick-up truck blew by in the tight space between our two vehicles. That was the scariest part.
Styrofoam pellets were flying everywhere. The thing in the road looked like the top half of a new barbecue grill that someone had failed to tie down in the bed of their truck.
“Thank you, God! Thank you, Universe! Thank you, Guardian Angels! Thank you, Barb!” I said as I drove around it.
I turned to the dogs. “Everybody okay?” I got back up to speed. Then I realized I needed to call 911 before someone got killed.
Did you know that you can’t ask your phone to dial 911? You have to do it manually because the one in your phone is for your local area, not where you are at that moment. If you call from your house, no problem. If you call from San Jose and you’re 45 minutes from home, big problem. I grabbed my cell and got myself to the keypad page, taking note of the upcoming exit.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I’m on northbound 680, and there’s debris in the road just south of Jacklin Road,” I said.
“I’ll transfer you to CHP.”
Then a barrage of questions. It was hard to hear the dispatch person, so I kept repeating the info, letting her know that we’d had a five-car-pile-up near miss.
I described the strange dome thing, about three feet high and three feet wide.
“Do you see a truck or vehicle that has stopped to retrieve the item?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Bluh, bluh, bluh bluh bluh,” Dispatch said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Bluh bluh safe bluh bluh.”
“You’re telling me to drive safely?”
“Bluh.”
“Thanks, I will.”
I did.
Last year I hit a log on Highway 4 on my way back from a hike, and it cost me almost $1000 to fix my car. This year I lucked out with the missed pile-up. It was scary close, but the traffic was light enough that people were able to avoid a crash.
They must’ve had their guardian angels onboard, too.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 